Azerbaijani deported from Germany faces 8 years in prison
Arrests of deportees from Germany
Political activist Samir Ashurov, arrested shortly after his deportation from Germany to Baku, faces 8 years in prison. On December 4, the prosecutor made such a demand to the judge of the Baku Court for Serious Crimes.
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According to the prosecutor, it was proved in court that Ashurov stabbed a man named Elshan Nabiyev near the Neftchilar metro station in Baku.
The defendant disagrees with this accusation and claims that Nabiyev is cooperating with the police. According to Ashurov, Nabiyev inflicted the injury on himself.
On December 4, before the prosecutor’s court appearance, Ashurov’s lawyer Elchin Sadygov filed a motion to verify whether the victim had been in contact with the police. In order to investigate Nabiyev’s contact with the police on the eve of the incident, he asked for information about his telephone conversations between April 18 and April 20, 2021.
“Elshan Nabiyev claims that he was operated on after the incident. But there are no traces of surgery on his body in the video. Of course, all operations are recorded on video. We ask, if he was operated on, to get a video of the operation from this hospital,” the lawyer said.
The court did not grant any of these motions. Then in his speech, the prosecutor asked to find Ashurov guilty and punish him under Articles 126.2.4 of the Criminal Code (intentional infliction of serious harm to health with intent to hooliganism) and 221 (hooliganism), and sentence him to 8 years in prison.
Ashurov’s lawyer asked for time to prepare a defense speech. He was given a deadline of December 18.
Samir Ashurov has been under arrest since April 19, 2021. According to the indictment, on the same day, while looking at his phone on the street, he hit Elshan Nabiyev with his shoulder. Nabiyev reprimanded him. In response, Ashurov threw him to the ground and stabbed him twice in the abdomen.
The political activist claims that the accusation is fabricated and the incident is a deliberate provocation. He says he was punished for participating in protests against human rights violations in Azerbaijan and for critical posts on social media during his stay in Germany.
“I was walking home in the evening. Someone came up to me shouting. Realizing that it was a provocation, I ran. When I started running, a policeman came out from behind each tree. It turns out that from the very beginning they were hiding.”
Ashurov also emphasized that he did not wound anyone with a knife. He claims that Nabiyev’s body was left with a scar from many years ago, which is presented as a new wound:
“At the police station of Nizami district of Baku, this man showed a wound on his stomach. It was definitely not a new scar. It was a scar from a wound received several years ago, but they present it as a fresh wound. He’s lying. Everyone knows this game is about getting me arrested, I didn’t stab anyone. I didn’t have a knife on me.”
Six people deported from Germany have been arrested in the last two years after their return to Azerbaijan and charged with drug possession, etc. None of them accept the charges and say that while in Germany they took part in protests against human rights violations in Azerbaijan and were slandered because of their criticism of the government.
Elshad Hajiyev, head of the Interior Ministry’s press service department, said allegations of police brutality against immigrants deported from Germany are groundless:
“Such things are completely untrue. They were detained on the basis of concrete facts.”
