Background
Dvin Isanyans took part in a protest in Yerevan’s Mashtots Park on 13 May 2014, when the Armenian and French Presidents were expected to meet there. Domestic courts found that he repeatedly tried to pass through a police cordon and refused police orders to stop.
Police subjected him to a three-hour administrative arrest and took him to a police station to prepare an administrative-offence report. He was later fined 50,000 Armenian drams for failing to comply with a lawful police order. His challenge to the lawfulness of the police action was rejected by the Armenian courts.
The Court’s Holding
The European Court of Human Rights unanimously held that Armenia violated Article 5 § 1 of the Convention. The police reports and domestic judgments did not establish that the statutory condition invoked for arrest under Article 259 of the Code of Administrative Offences—that an administrative-offence report could not be drawn up on the spot—had been met.
The Government’s later reliance on a supposed need to prevent an offence could not cure that defect. That ground had not been invoked by the domestic authorities, and the Court held it could not be advanced retrospectively. The Court declared the Article 5 complaint admissible, rejected the Article 6 complaint as inadmissible, and awarded EUR 1,600 for non-pecuniary damage and EUR 1,000 for costs and expenses.
Key Takeaways
- An administrative arrest must satisfy both domestic legal requirements and the Convention’s protection against arbitrariness.
- Authorities must demonstrate the specific statutory basis for arrest; they cannot rely on a new justification after the event.
- Police did not show that taking Isanyans to a station was necessary to prepare the administrative-offence report.
Why It Matters
The judgment reinforces that short-term detention during protest policing requires a concrete and contemporaneously established legal basis. Even where a protester has disobeyed police orders, that does not itself establish that administrative arrest was necessary under the provision relied on.