Background
Abraham Ashghyan (born 1992) and Narine Poghosyan (born 1990), both Armenian nationals, were arrested on 23 June 2015. They separately lodged applications with the European Court of Human Rights in December 2015, each alleging that their arrest and deprivation of liberty were unlawful under Article 5 § 1 of the Convention.
The applicants’ complaints were closely analogous to those raised in Ishkhanyan v. Armenia (no. 5297/16, 13 February 2025), a leading case in which the Court had already found that arrests carried out in similar circumstances in Armenia violated Article 5 § 1 because they lacked the requisite reasonable suspicion of an offence. The Armenian Government contested admissibility but did not provide material capable of distinguishing the present cases from that precedent.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Section Committee, sitting unanimously, joined the two applications and declared them admissible. Applying the principles established in Ishkhanyan v. Armenia, the Court held that the arrests of both applicants were not based on a reasonable suspicion of them having committed an offence, in breach of Article 5 § 1 of the Convention. The Government’s admissibility objections were dismissed in line with the reasoning set out in Ishkhanyan (§§ 108–120).
Having found the core violation — absence of reasonable suspicion at the time of arrest — the Court declined to separately examine the applicants’ remaining complaints concerning the lawfulness of their subsequent police custody, as it considered that no additional finding was necessary.
Under Article 41, Armenia was ordered to pay each applicant €2,000 in non-pecuniary damages, plus €250 per application in costs and expenses, within three months, with ECB marginal lending rate plus three percentage points applicable on any late payment.
Key Takeaways
- An arrest that is formally compliant with domestic law may still violate Article 5 § 1 of the Convention if it is not grounded in a reasonable suspicion that the person committed an offence.
- The Court applied its precedent from Ishkhanyan v. Armenia (no. 5297/16, 13 February 2025) as the controlling authority, finding no facts or arguments that warranted a departure.
- Where the initial arrest lacks reasonable suspicion, the Court need not separately assess the lawfulness of continued police custody.
- Each applicant was awarded €2,000 in non-pecuniary damages plus €250 in costs — modest awards consistent with the Court’s practice in repetitive cases resolved by Committee.
Why It Matters
This judgment reinforces the Court’s consistent scrutiny of Armenian arrest practices, forming part of a line of repetitive cases following Ishkhanyan v. Armenia. It underscores that the reasonable-suspicion requirement under Article 5 § 1(c) is a substantive safeguard against arbitrary detention, not merely a procedural formality, and that domestic legal authorization of an arrest does not insulate it from Convention review.
For practitioners and state authorities, the case is a reminder that structural or systemic deficiencies in arrest procedures — once identified by the Court in a leading judgment — will result in adverse findings across a series of related cases without the need for further detailed examination, placing pressure on respondent states to implement general measures to address the underlying problem.