4.  The applicants’ dates of birth and places of residence are given in the Appendix. 5.  At the material time all the applicants were members of an opposition party, the Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan (“the PFPA”), which together with some other parties formed a political union, Milli Shura. The first applicant was chairman of the Youth Committee of the PFPA and a journalist for the Azadlig newspaper. The fourth applicant was a member of that committee and the fifth applicant was a member of its board. The second applicant was chairman of the Jalilabad district branch of the PFPA and had also been a candidate of the PFPA-Musavat political bloc in the parliamentary elections of 2010. The third and sixth applicants were bodyguards for a chairman of the PFPA, Mr A.K. 6.  It appears that the period from 2011 to 2013 was marked by an increase in political sensitivity in the country generated, inter alia, by the presidential elections, which took place in October 2013. 7.  During the same period all the applicants participated in a number of peaceful opposition demonstrations. In the course of many of them, most of the applicants were arrested and subsequently convicted, as the assemblies had not been authorised. In particular, the second and third applicants were arrested during a demonstration on 20 October 2012 and the fourth and fifth applicants were arrested during a demonstration on 26 January 2013. The second and fourth applicants were also arrested during a demonstration on 11 March 2013. 8.  According to the applicants, they had also intended to participate in upcoming protests planned by Milli Shura (including a protest scheduled for 9 March 2014, which was eventually cancelled). In addition, the fourth applicant was an organiser of a protest scheduled for 23 February 2014. According to him, he had created a Facebook group calling for the resignation of the Baku city mayor, who had allegedly insulted the Azeri nation in a speech by saying that the only man in the country was the President. The group had invited the public to participate in a demonstration against the mayor. 9.  All the applicants were arrested in either February or March 2014. The fourth applicant was arrested on 22 February, the first, second and third applicants on 27 February, and the sixth applicant on 5 March. The fifth applicant claimed that he had also been arrested on 5 March, but according to the official records, he was arrested early in the morning (at around 7 a.m.) on 6 March. 10.  According to the official records:
(a)  the first applicant was arrested for disobeying a lawful order of a police officer to stop swearing loudly without addressing anyone in particular;
(b)  the police approached (stopped) the second and sixth applicants because they had been noticed “behaving suspiciously”, the third applicant because he was suspected of committing a traffic accident, the fifth applicant because there was a complaint against him by a certain Ms K.N., and the fourth applicant because there was “information” about him. All those applicants were arrested because when police officers had approached (stopped) them, they had deliberately failed to comply with an order to produce an identity document and/or had been rude or “showed resistance”. 11.  All the applicants contested the official version of their arrest:
(a)  The first, second and third applicants claimed that they had been approached by police officers and had been requested to follow them to a police station or office, and that they had obeyed those requests. The third applicant also submitted that he had been requested to show his identity document and that he had obeyed that request too. Furthermore, the first and second applicants argued that the reasons given by the police officers for arresting them had been different from the official versions. Thus, the police had demanded that the first applicant follow them to a police station because “there was a problem with a loan he had obtained from a bank”. He went to the police station together with his father. Sometime later, his father was requested to leave the police station, while the first applicant remained in police custody. The police demanded that the second applicant follow them to a police office because “the chief of police wanted to see him”.
(b)  The fourth, fifth and sixth applicants submitted that they had been arrested by people in plain clothes, without any explanations, and that initially they had not known that those persons were police officers. In particular, the fourth applicant claimed that he had been arrested at his flat and that the persons who had arrested him had also seized his computer and had taken him to a police station. Later the police accessed his Facebook account through that computer and put a notice on it that the demonstration planned for 23 February 2014 had been cancelled. The fifth applicant claimed that he had been arrested in the evening of the day before the officially recorded date and had spent the night in custody. 12.  At the respective police stations or offices, administrative offence reports (inzibati xəta haqqında protokol) were issued against the applicants, setting out the charges against them. All the applicants were charged with an administrative offence under Article 310.1 of the Code of Administrative Offences (“the CAO”) (failure to comply with a lawful order of a police officer). The first applicant was also charged under Article 296 of the CAO (minor hooliganism). 13.  According to the applicants, they were never served with copies of the administrative offence reports or with other documents from their case files. They were also not given access to a lawyer after their arrest or while they were in police custody. 14.  According to a record (protokol) issued by a police officer (who had arrested the fifth applicant and prepared an administrative offence report on him) and signed by that police officer and the fifth applicant, a State-funded lawyer was proposed to the applicant, but the applicant refused his assistance. The lawyer’s name and signature are missing from that record. 15.  According to a statement (ərizə) written by the fourth applicant at a police office on the day of his arrest, he had refused the services of a lawyer. 16.  On various dates the applicants were brought before the respective first-instance courts, which adopted their decisions on the merits on the same dates (see Appendix). 17.  According to all the applicants, they were not given an opportunity to appoint lawyers of their own choosing. State-funded lawyers were appointed to assist them. 18.  According to the documents in the respective case files, the first, third, fifth and sixth applicants refused the assistance of State-funded lawyers and decided to defend themselves in person. 19.  According to the transcripts of the respective hearings, in their oral submissions the State-funded lawyer for the second applicant (Mr K.K.) briefly asked the court to discontinue the administrative case, and the State‑funded lawyer for the fourth applicant (Ms S.H.) briefly asked the court to consider the young age of the applicant. 20.  In their statements before the courts the first, second, third, fourth and sixth applicants contested (see paragraph 11 above) the police officers’ versions of the events. The first applicant argued that he had been arrested for his political activity. The third applicant argued that the police’s allegation that they were investigating a car accident was a lie and that the police had wanted to frame him. The fourth applicant argued that he had been arrested for the comments he had posted on Facebook against the Baku city mayor. 21.  The courts disregarded those statements. 22.  The fifth applicant, however, gave a self-incriminatory statement confirming the police officers’ account of the events. He subsequently claimed that he had done so because the previous day he had been threatened with more serious charges and had still felt under the control of the police. 23.  During the hearings with regard to the first, second, fourth and fifth applicants only the police officers who, according to the official records, had arrested the applicants and/or issued administrative offence reports on them were questioned as witnesses. In their statements those police officers reiterated the official version of the reasons for the applicants’ arrests (see paragraph 10 above). 24.  In the case of the third applicant the court questioned three prosecution witnesses. All three stated that the applicant “had argued with the police officers, resisted and insulted them, saying to a police major ‘why have you brought these puppies here?’”. 25.  In the case of the sixth applicant the court did not question any witnesses. 26.  The courts found that the applicants had committed the administrative offences attributed to them (see paragraph 10 above). They convicted the applicants under Article 310.1 of the CAO and sentenced them to periods of administrative detention varying from ten to twenty days (see Appendix). The first applicant was also convicted under Article 296 of the CAO. 27.  On various dates the applicants lodged appeals with the Baku Court of Appeal, presenting their version of the facts surrounding their arrests, and arguing that they had been unlawfully arrested for their political activity, including their active participation in demonstrations (the first, second, third, fifth and sixth applicants) or the comments they had posted on social media (the fourth applicant). The applicants also complained that the hearings before the respective first-instance courts had not been fair. 28.  In addition, the fifth applicant submitted that previously he had given self-incriminatory statements for fear of being framed for the offence of illegal possession of drugs. He also complained that he had been kept in the police station overnight from 5 to 6 March 2014 without any official decision or record of his detention. 29.  All the applicants were represented before the Baku Court of Appeal by lawyers of their own choosing. 30.  On various dates the Baku Court of Appeal dismissed the applicants’ appeals and upheld the decisions of the respective first-instance courts, stating that the conclusions reached by those courts were correct (see Appendix).