They are trying to silence those who talk about the "Terter case"

Baku/28.06.22/Turan: On June 9, the Yevlakh District Court sentenced Ilham Aslanoglu (Tahmazov), a lawyer and activist who participated in the public investigation of the Terter case, to six months in prison. This is the lawyer's second arrest in a year. Earlier, on January 28, the Yevlakh District Court found Ilham Aslanoglu guilty under  the Article 147.2 (libel with charges of committing a grave or especially grave crime) and sentenced him to five months in prison.

Today, the Khazar District Court considered a lawsuit against the chairman of the Baku Unity Organization (Bakı Birlik Təşkilatının,) the host of the KİM TV channel Abid Gafarov. The lawsuit was filed by a group of Karabakh veterans.

Ilham Aslanoglu and Abid Gafarov are known for their active propaganda of the facts of torture against military personnel and civilians in the "Terter case". What is the purpose of arresting and starting legal prosecution of those who speak about the "Terter case"?

Politician Sahib Karimli and head of the Center for Anti-Torture Research Fikret Jafarli answer these and other questions in the “Difficult Question” program.

According to Fikret Jafarli, before the start of the trial, the veterans themselves admitted that there had been a misunderstanding and they were dropping their claims. “After the lawsuit was launched, the veterans withdrew their claims in writing. However, instead of dismissing the case, the judge decided to refer it to the Yasamal court for consideration. Moreover, the names of the veterans who withdrew their claims were again included in this decision as plaintiffs,” the human rights activist said.

He also noted that during the trial, the veterans' lawyer behaved not like a defender, but like an accuser. "All this makes us think that this is “an ordered case," he concluded. Sahib Karimli also believes that there are forces striving to neutralize the process of public investigation of the “Terter case”, which began with the filming of Ilham Aslanoglu and continued on the AzerFreedom TV channel, which began to expand more and more and contributed to the decision on December 16, 2021 by the political leadership of the country to resume the investigation into this case.

In his opinion, the Azerbaijani society is not fully aware of the essence and significance of the “Terter case.”

“The Terter massacre was a large-scale sabotage directed not only against the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan, not only against the Azerbaijani state, but also against the Azerbaijani people as a whole. And if this were fully realized, then a powerful movement would be created to give a legal and moral assessment of this case,” he said.--0--