Amnesty International called for investigating the death of M.Galandarov and other prisoners

London/11.05.17/Turan: Azerbaijan is obliged to protect the right to life and effectively investigate deaths in custody. The authorities are obliged to ensure a prompt, independent and effective investigation of all deaths in places of deprivation of liberty and to make them public, stated today's statement by Amnesty International in connection with the death in custody in Azerbaijan of Mahira Mustafayev and Mehman Galandarov.

On 4 May 2017, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the Azerbaijani government violated the right to life of Mahir Mustafayev without protecting his life and without conducting an effective investigation into the circumstances of his death. Mustafayev died of severe burns as a result of a fire in his cell in December 2006.

It was alleged that the warders themselves set fire to the camera to hide the fact of death from torture.

Mustafayev was taken to the hospital 8 hours after the fire. The European Court considered this case as the inability of the government to protect life and the violation of the right to life.

This decision of the European Court was made a week after the Azerbaijani activist and blogger Mehman Galandarov was found hanged in his prison cell in Kurdamany on April 28, 2017.

He was arrested on February 7, 2017, shortly after he wrote on his Facebook page a status in support of two prisoners of conscience imprisoned for inscriptions on the monument to Heydar Aliyev in the center of Baku.

According to the authorities, Galandarov hanged himself around noon, while his cellmate was asleep. A local human rights activist, who had previously been in the same detention facility for over a year, could not have been like that. There is no doubt that Galandarov was tortured to confess to the possession of drugs. The staff of the penitentiary service initially denied reports of Galandarov's suicide, and admitted this only after two days. Galandarov was buried secretly, but journalists and representatives of civil society in the morgue saw on the body of the deceased injury and bruises.

On April 30, after a forensic medical examination, the prosecutor's office began a criminal investigation with an emphasis on inciting to suicide. According to the forensic report, no signs of violence were found on the body, except strangulation.

The Azerbaijani authorities should conduct a new independent investigation in the case of Mustafayev and Galandarov within the framework of international standards, the statement said. Amnesty International regularly records facts of trumped-up charges of drug possession against critics of the authorities.

Their arrests are surprisingly similar: arrests and interrogations are conducted without lawyers, they are forced to sign "confessions" with the use of torture and other ill-treatment.

Allegations of torture and ill-treatment are almost never investigated, strengthening the process of human rights violations and impunity for perpetrators, reads the statement. -02D-