Human Rights Defenders Ask Macron to Call Aliyev to Release Political Prisoners
Baku / 18.07.18 / Turan: A group of Azerbaijani and international human rights activists appealed to French President Francois Macron, calling attention to human rights problems in Azerbaijan during his meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on July 20.
The authors are concerned about the depressing human rights situation in Azerbaijan, where more than 100 opposition supporters, journalists, bloggers and religious activists are held in prisons.
Leader of the opposition Ilgar Mammadov, recognized as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, is still behind bars, despite the decision of the European Court of Human Rights of May 2014, which recognized his arrest as illegal.
In November 2017, the ECHR ruled again that Ilgar Mammadov"s rights to a fair trial were violated.
The authors of the appeal ask Macron to call upon Ilham Aliyev to unconditionally release Ilgar Mammadov and all other convicted persons for peaceful demand of their rights to freedom of expression, religion and belief.
The Azerbaijani government ignored the ECHR, despite the fact that the Committee against Torture adopted almost a dozen resolutions calling for the release of Mammadov.
On October 25, 2017, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted an unprecedented decision to investigate against Azerbaijan under Article 46 of the European Convention on Non-Execution of Judgments of the ECHR.
The process can lead to the imposition of sanctions against Azerbaijan and deprivation of its voting rights in PACE.
"We believe that your intervention can make a difference in the cases of Ilgar Mammadov and other political prisoners in Azerbaijan and trust that human rights will be high on the agenda at your meeting with President Aliyev in Paris on 20 July 2018," it was said in conclusion.
The appeal was signed by the Director of the Human Rights Club (Azerbaijan) Rasul Jafarov and the Director of the International Partnership for Human Rights (Belgium), Brigitte Dufour.
A copy of the message was also sent to the French Embassy in Azerbaijan. -06D-
Politics
-
Chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) Alexander Bastrykin arrived in Grozny, where he held a meeting on the investigation of the crash of the plane "Azerbaijan Airlines".
-
On 28 December, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov.
-
On December 28 president of Ukrain called to the president of Azerbaijan İlham Aliyev.
-
The preliminary investigation into the case of Russian oligarch and former "state minister" of the separatist regime of Nagorno-Karabakh, Ruben Vardanyan, has been completed. According to a joint statement by the Prosecutor General's Office and the State Security Service of Azerbaijan, Vardanyan has been charged under the following articles of the Azerbaijani Criminal Code: Article 100 (planning or waging aggressive war), Article 107 (deportation or coercion of the population), Article 109 (persecution), Article 112 (deprivation of liberty in violation of international law), Article 113 (torture), Article 114 (mercenary activities), Article 115 (violating laws and customs of war), Article 116 (violating laws and customs of war), Article 214 (terrorism), Article 214-1 (financing terrorism), Article 218 (organization of a criminal community), Article 228 (illegal trafficking in weapons), Article 270-1 (creating threats to aviation safety), Article 278 (violent seizure of power or violent retention of power, violent change of the constitutional order of the state), Article 279 (creation of illegal armed formations), Article 318 (illegal crossing of the Azerbaijani state border).
Leave a review