PRESIDENT LAYS FOUNDATION STONE FOR NEW BUILDING OF SUPREME COURT
Chairman of the Supreme Court Ramiz Rzayev informed the President that the new building will be constructed in accordance of modern standards, have five floors and basement and occupy the area of 26.000 square meters. Its basement, according to him, will accommodate parking facilities, technical support and archival depositories, ten 100 square meter courtrooms will be in the first floor, while the upper floors will house offices for judges and management of the court, 400 square meter conference hall, e-library, training rooms equipped with audio-video facilities, as well as museum.
The AZN21 million construction works will be carried out by Youth Scientific-Technical Center “Khazar” and is expected to take two years an a half.
President Ilham Aliyev placed a time capsule containing a paper with the words “The foundation stone for the new office building of the Supreme Court of the Azerbaijan Republic was laid by President of the Azerbaijan Republic Ilham Aliyev on 8 August 2006” into the building’s foundation, and filled it with liquid concrete.
After that, the President addressed the ceremony.
“I am confident that a beautiful building will be constructed here in a short period of time, and we will have a grand temple of justice in our capital… This is a manifestation of general progress in Azerbaijan,” he said.
“Intensive work on improvement of judicial system in Azerbaijan is underway. After Azerbaijan regained its state independence, judicial and legal reforms began in the country. This work was initiated by the great leader Heydar Aliyev, and is being continued today because improvement of the judicial and legal system is extremely important for development of any country. This process is continuous even in developed countries; in other words, it has a beginning but does not have an end…”
“The process of building democratic and legal state and judicial-legal reforms in Azerbaijan must, of course, run in parallel because these two factors are strongly dependant on one another. Today, both political and economic reforms are being implemented successfully enough in Azerbaijan. Our country is being modernized, renewed turning into a very active and worthy member of the global community.”
“Azerbaijan is the regional leader in per capita foreign investments. Investors, usually, first study a country’s legislative basis, the state of its tax and judicial and legal system. There is still a need for large-scale reforms in this sphere as it has a quite number of shortcomings...”
“We should deal with all the appeals as carefully as possible, consider them, and eliminate all the shortcomings existing in the judicial system… I hope the new management of the Supreme Court and the cases they have launched will be instrumental in creation of a radical turn in this system.”
“As you are aware, creation of the Judicial-legal Council is very important step in this direction. At the same time, professional skills of judges should steadily improve. There is already some progress in this relation. Judges are elected transparently, and their number grows. Thus, on the whole, the process of improvement of the judicial system is successfully underway.”
“Everybody must be equal before the law. All the decisions must be just. Unjust decisions affect people’s fates. We cannot allow injustice. At the same time, those who committed crimes must not be allowed to avoid punishment. Every crime must be punished, but innocent people should never be victims of unjust verdicts. This is the fundamental principle of the judicial system, and I am confident that the work being done, the measures being taken in this field in Azerbaijan will be effective very soon.”