Isabel Santos (MP, Portugal), the chair of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions, deplored the sentencing of rights defender Anar Mammadli by a Baku court to 5 ½ years in prison.
“The Azerbaijani government’s systematic targeting of civil society has reached a new low with the sentencing of Anar Mammadli. I fear that Mr. Mammadli’s only crime may have been his work to defend the rights of his country’s voters. His conviction and sentencing represents an affront to OSCE values in the sphere of human rights and democratic commitments,” Santos said.
Mammadli, the Chairman of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre (EMDSC), was sentenced to jail this week for tax evasion, illegal business activities and using his office to falsify election results. Two of his associates, the Centre's executive director, Basir Suleymanli, and the director of the Union for International Cooperation of Volunteers, Elnur Mammadov, were also sentenced to prison terms.
The EMDSC is an established citizen election-observation group that has documented flaws in recent votes in Azerbaijan. It has faced multiple legal challenges concerning its registration and has reported frequent harassment by authorities in recent years.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Mammadli’s detention adds to the concerning human rights backdrop for the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s Annual Session in Baku next month. I hope that our presence there will encourage the judicial system to take a hard look at its record on OSCE commitments and signal that these violations will not go unnoticed,” Santos added.
The 23rd Annual Session of the OSCE PA will take place in the Azerbaijani capital from 28 June to 2 July 2014.
Mammadli was a key speaker at briefings for the OSCE PA's observation delegation in October 2013 on the eve of Azerbaijan's presidential election. The Centre’s statement on that election noted extensive violations of fundamental freedoms and a range of other shortcomings in the electoral process, many of which were also observed and reported by the OSCE.
Mammadli’s detention in December 2013 prevented him from attending a panel at the OSCE PA’s Winter Meeting in Vienna this February on political prisoners in the OSCE area. -02D-
Politics
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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev called President of the United States Donald Trump on 25 November.
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Director of the Institute of Political Management, political scientist Azer Gasymly has been summoned to the Main Police Department of Baku at 16:00 today. He wrote about it in facebook.
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Adalyat Verdiyev, the head of the civil defense staff at the public legal entity Center for Public Health and Reform under the Ministry of Health, and a military expert, has been arrested. On November 22, during a media tour to the liberated territories, Verdiyev filmed and published information and images on his social media accounts revealing Azerbaijani Armed Forces' combat positions in the heights, deployment sites, coordinates, and operational conditions of the border troops. This disclosure caused significant damage to the interests of state security and defense capability. This was stated in a report from the General Prosecutor’s Office.
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On Monday, the Baku Appeals Court considered the appeal of Talysh researcher Iqbal Abilov against the extension of his detention for another four months. The defense argued that the decision to extend Abilov's detention was unjustified, lawyer Fariz Namazly told reporters.
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