6.  The applicants’ dates of birth and places of residence are given in the Appendix.
7.  On 12 January, 26 January and 10 March 2013 demonstrations were planned to be held in Baku. It appears that the organisers of the demonstrations gave no proper prior notice to the relevant authority, the Baku City Executive Authority (“the BCEA”). Information about the demonstrations was disseminated through Facebook or the press.
8.  According to the applicants, the demonstrations were intended to be peaceful and were conducted in a peaceful manner. The demonstrations of 12 January and 10 March 2013 were aimed at protesting about the deaths of soldiers in the army, while the demonstration of 26 January 2013 condemned the use of force by the police against the participants of previous demonstrations.
9.  Each applicant attended one of the demonstrations (see Appendix), but shortly after they had begun the police started to disperse those who had gathered. All three applicants were arrested during the dispersal operations and were taken to police stations.
According to the second applicant, during the demonstration she was giving an interview to the media and the moment of her arrest was recorded.
10.  The applicants were questioned at the police stations they had been taken to.
11.  On the day of each applicant’s arrest administrative-offence reports (inzibati xəta haqqında protokol) were issued, which stated that the applicants had committed an administrative offence under Article 298.2 of the Code of Administrative Offences (“the CAO”) (participation in a public assembly that was not organised in accordance with the law).
12.  According to the first and second applicants, they were never served with copies of the administrative-offence reports or with other documents from their case files.
13.  According to the first and third applicants, they were not given access to a lawyer after their arrest or while they were in police custody.
14.  According to a statement (ərizə) written by the second applicant at the police station on the day of her arrest, she refused the services of a lawyer.
15.  The first applicant was released after being kept in police custody for a few hours, subject to an undertaking to reappear at the police station two days later.
16.  The third applicant was taken to a trial court directly from the police station on the day following his arrest. The first applicant was brought before a first-instance court on the date he returned to the police station. The second applicant was brought before a court on the day of her arrest; however, the hearing was postponed for two days to allow her to hire a lawyer of her own choosing.
17.  A State-funded lawyer was appointed to assist the first applicant. The second and third applicants were not represented by a lawyer. According to documents from the case file of the second applicant, on the day the hearing recommenced, the lawyer she had hired failed to appear and she decided to defend herself in person.
18.  None of the material submitted to the Court contains any records showing that the State-funded lawyer, Mr V.M., made any oral or written submissions on behalf of the first applicant.
19.  The only witnesses questioned during the court hearing with respect to the second applicant were the police officers who, according to the official records, had arrested her or had drawn up the administrative-offence report. The police officers testified that the applicant had staged an unauthorised demonstration. No witnesses were questioned by the courts in the first and third applicants’ cases.
20.  The first-instance courts found that the applicants had participated in unauthorised demonstrations. The applicants were convicted under Article 298.2 of the CAO and sentenced to fines of 450, 500 and 600 Azerbaijani manats (AZN) respectively (see Appendix).
21.  On various dates the applicants lodged appeals with the Baku Court of Appeal, arguing that their convictions had been in violation of their rights because the demonstrations in which they had participated had been spontaneous and peaceful. The applicants also complained that their arrests had been unlawful and that the hearings before the first-instance courts had not been fair. They asked the Baku Court of Appeal to quash the first-instance courts’ decisions in their cases.
22.  The applicants were not represented before the Baku Court of Appeal by a lawyer.
23.  The appellate court refused to grant the applicants’ requests to hear evidence from particular witnesses in their favour, without giving any reasons for the refusal. In the case of the second applicant the court in a similar way additionally refused to examine video recordings made by the media during her arrest.
24.  On various dates the Baku Court of Appeal dismissed the applicants’ appeals and upheld the decisions of the first-instance courts (see Appendix).
25.  On 8 August 2014 Mr I. Aliyev, who represented all three applicants before the Court, was arrested on charges of large-scale tax evasion, abuse of power and illegal entrepreneurship. On the same day he was detained pending trial. The circumstances relating to Mr Aliyev’s arrest and detention are the subject of a separate application brought by him before the Court (application no. 68762/14).
26.  On 8 and 9 August 2014 the prosecuting authorities conducted a search of Mr Aliyev’s home and office. During the search the domestic authorities seized a large number of documents, including all the case files relating to the pending applications before the Court, which were in Mr Aliyev’s possession as a representative. The files relating to the present cases, which, it appears, included copies of all the documents and correspondence between the Court and the parties, were also seized in their entirety. No adequate inventory of the seized document files relating to the Court proceedings was made in the search and seizure records of 8 and 9 August 2014.
27.  On an unspecified date Mr Aliyev lodged a complaint with the Nasimi District Court, claiming that the search had been unlawful. He further complained about the seizure of the documents and files relating to the pending court proceedings before the Court and the domestic courts.
28.  On 12 September 2014 the Nasimi District Court dismissed Mr Aliyev’s claim. It held that the searches had been conducted in accordance with the relevant law. As to the seizure of the documents relating to the cases pending before the Court and the domestic courts, it found that they could not be returned to the applicants at that stage of the proceedings. Following an appeal, on 23 September 2014 the Baku Court of Appeal upheld the first-instance court’s decision of 12 September 2014.
29.  On 25 October 2014 the investigating authorities returned a number of the case files concerning the applications lodged with the Court, including the files relating to the present cases, to Mr Aliyev’s lawyer. The investigator’s relevant decision specified that “since it [had] been established that among the documents seized on 8 and 9 August 2014 there [had been] files concerning applications by a number of individuals and organisations lodged with the European Court of Human Rights, which ha[d] no relation to the substance of the criminal proceedings [against Mr Intigam Aliyev], [those files] ha[d] been delivered to [Mr Aliyev’s lawyer,] Mr Javad Javadov”.