Updated list of political prisoners in Azerbaijan includes the names of 99 people
99 political prisoners in Azerbaijan
The human rights Institute for Peace and Democracy has published an updated list of political prisoners in Azerbaijan including the names of 99 people. This is one fewer than last summer. Today in Baku, a meeting of the Court of Appeal on an administrative case against Ahmed Mammadli, leader of the political you organization D-18, was held. He was arrested for thirty days on September 20. His friends and associates believe the arrest to be politically motivated.
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The Union for Freedom of Political Prisoners of Azerbaijan has published an updated list of political prisoners. The list was compiled by the director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy Leyla Yunus and the head of the Center for Monitoring Political Prisoners Elshan Hasanov, Turan news reports.
When compiling the list, human rights activists relied on the concept of “political prisoner” established by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Last summer on June 6, a previous similar list was published. It included 100 people.
According to one of the authors, Elshan Hasanov, new names have appeared on the list. These are religious activist Fagan Mammadov (host of KIM TV YouTube channel) and Abid Gafarov.
Fagan Mammadov was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of drug trafficking. He was bringing shirts with religious slogans not prohibited by law from Baku to Ganja for the Ashura ceremony. Mammadov actively helped the families of those involved in the Ganja case, collecting and transferring aid to prisoners, the report said.
Abid Gafarov was sentenced to a year in prison for calling on Karabakh war veterans to protest against injustice.
The names of the theologian Elshan Mustafaoglu, who was released from prison, Teymur Osmanov, a member of the Muslim Unity Movement, and Elshad Mustafayev, who was sentenced to life and died in prison, were excluded from the previous list.
Political prisoners are divided into several groups: journalists and bloggers (four people), members of opposition parties and movements (four people), political emigrants deported from Germany (five people), believers (nineteen people), convicted in the “Terter case” (27 people), convicted in the “Ganja case” (27 people), life-sentences (thirteen people).
Ahmad Mammadli’s appeal rejected
On September 20 in Baku, unknown people in civilian clothes detained the leader of the youth political organization D-18, Ahmad Mammadli. A few hours later, it became known that Mammadli had been at the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime. Soon the court sentenced the young politician to thirty days of administrative arrest on charges of “disobedience of the legitimate demands of government officials.”
Friends and associates of Mammadli claim that he was arrested for his political posts on social networks.
From the day of his arrest, Ahmad Mammadli went on hunger strike in protest against the illegal arrest. He ended the hunger strike on its fifth day when his health deteriorated. This was announced by lawyer Zibeyda Zakariyaeva.
Today, the Baku Court of Appeal rejected the arguments of Mammadli’s defense and left the court’s decision against him in force.
99 political prisoners in Azerbaijan
