At Trial of "Prisoners of Light", Court Rejects All Defense Motions

Baku / 30.06.17 / Turan: At the preparatory hearing on the case of five accused persons arrested for participating in a protest against the power outage in the settlements for IDPs from the Jabrayil district in Bilasuvar, all defense applications were rejected. The court took the case to consideration.

On December 22, in Bilasuvar, a protest action was held against the power outage in 11 settlements for IDPs due to consumer debt. The police brutally dispersed the action. Jalal Guliyev, Zaur Feyruzlu, and Gyulaga Almammadov were arrested. They were charged under articles 186.2.2 (intentional destruction or damage to property), 233 (violation of public order) and 315.2 (violence against a government representative) of the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan. On the same charges, on December 24, two more people, Ulvi Guliyev and Ilkin Iskandarov, were arrested.

On June 30, they were brought to trial. The preparatory meeting was held in the Jabrayil district court in the territory of the Bilasuvar district. The relatives of the accused, members of the public and journalists were not allowed to enter the trial, but the victims who were police officers were let into the hall. There are only 21 of them. But not all of them came to court.

As the lawyer Elchin Sadigov said, the defense petitioned for the termination of criminal proceedings on justifiable grounds. In addition, the lawyers asked to remove evidence obtained by unacceptable methods, including testimony knocked out by pressure, from the case. The defense also applied for audio and video recording of the trial and for changing the measure of restraint for house arrest. However, all the applications were rejected. The court accepted the case for consideration and ordered a substantive hearing on 14 July.

During the meeting, the relatives of the defendants who were left in the street in hot weather became ill. Two women swooned and were recovered only after the people around helped them.

All five accused are recognized as political prisoners and classified as so-called "prisoners of conscience".

Recall that after the protest, the authorities made concessions and granted a respite to pay off the arrears for electricity. And in March 2017 all 11 settlements were gasified. -06D--