The amnesty act, adopted on December 19 by the initiative of President Ilham Aliyev and currently being implemented, according to official information, foresees the reduction of sentences for more than 3,000 people. The discussion concerns individuals to whom the amnesty is partially applied. Some individuals have been convicted under several articles of the Criminal Code, and among those articles, there are provisions that allow for amnesty.
How will the process of partial application of amnesty, i.e., sentence reduction, be conducted? Will each individual's case be heard separately in courts?
The head of the Constitutional Research Foundation, lawyer Alimammad Nuriyev told Medianews.az that according to procedure, a preliminary legal examination is first conducted regarding individuals subject to amnesty: "The penal institution or probation authority checks whether the person falls within the amnesty, whether there are restrictions on applying the amnesty, i.e., whether the articles exempt from amnesty apply to that person. At this stage, documentation is prepared, a submission is made and sent to the leadership of the Penitentiary Service. The leadership of the Penitentiary Service reviews the issue again. Then, those who will be fully released from punishment have their cases sent to the prosecutor's office for additional review. After the prosecutor's opinion, the Penitentiary Service releases the persons who are fully exempted from punishment.
Similar procedures are carried out at the beginning of partial release; if the person qualifies for amnesty, the administration of the penal institution prepares a submission and sends it to the leadership of the Penitentiary Service. The Penitentiary Service leadership reviews the case and then prepares a submission to the court. Thus, the issue of sentence reduction is resolved in court.
The important point here is that the criminal case is not retried in court, nor is the guilt of the individual discussed. Only the application of the amnesty act is decided. The court calculates specifically for the convicted individual how many months or years the sentence will be reduced. The court may adopt this decision without holding a hearing, simply based on the materials, sometimes holding a simplified hearing. Overall, this is not a full-scale court investigation but rather an executive legal procedure.
Each person's case is considered individually. But this does not mean it is a lengthy process. Sequential, collective proceedings mechanisms are applied in courts, standardized decisions are made based on similar categories. That is, individuality is preserved since everyone’s sentence is different, but the system is not overloaded.
Thus, the matter is individualized because every person’s sentence differs, the exact amount of sentence reduction is calculated, and a legal decision is made for each case, but this does not turn into a full-scale court process. The courts here act as the legal guarantors of the enforcement phase of the amnesty."
Naile Gasimova,
Medianews.az
