Prosecutor's office warned human rights activist for publicizing facts of torture of PFPA activists

Baku/03.08.20/Turan: On 3 August the executive director of the human rights organization "Line of Defense" Rufat Safarov was interrogated for three hours at the Investigation Department of the Prosecutor General's Office. He was warned for spreading information on social networks about torture of PFPA activists Fuad Gahramanli and Seymur Ahmedov, who were arrested in connection with the July 15 rally.

In an interview with Turan, Safarov said that he was interrogated by investigator Mehdi Mirzoev. As for the torture of Gahramanli and Ahmedov, information about this came from an anonymous source. “Taking into account that lawyers were not allowed to both of them and they did not have a telephone connection with their family members, we made this information public without disclosing the source. We appealed to the Ombudsman and the International Committee of the Red Cross to take the issue under humanitarian control. We also called on the Prosecutor General's Office to take urgent measures to investigate the case, to give a legal assessment,” Safarov said.

“The prosecutor’s office stated that the information about torture was groundless. However, if the defenders were still not allowed to see Gahramanli and  Ahmedov, then the fate of these persons worries us seriously,” he said. The Prosecutor General's Office issued a warning to Safarov, accusing him of disseminating false information.

“I am allegedly engaged in illegal activities. I said that as a human rights organization, we shared the information we had in the light of public interest and strong suspicions. Investigation and giving a legal assessment is entrusted to the Prosecutor General's Office,” Safarov said.

As for the denial by the Ombudsman of the information about the torture of Gahramanli, Safarov said that he himself was a former political prisoner and had been ill-treated in prison. Then the ombudsman for human rights also came out with such denials.

On August 2 the Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor General's Office also denied reports of torture of Gahramanli and other arrested oppositionists. Polad Gahramanli (Fuad Gahramanli’s brother) told Turan that they were allowed to talk to the arrested person by phone. “Fuad said everything is fine. He did not say anything about torture,“Everything is fine, I am alive and well,” said Polad Gahramanli.

Rufat Safarov also circulated on social networks a letter from another arrested person, Seymur Ahmedov, who reports that from the day of his arrest he has been tortured and feels not like an arrested person, but like a prisoner. Ahmedov points out that he was beaten for an hour with a truncheon in the Narimanov police by a person in plain clothes, demanding to "apologize" in front of the camera, threatening to beat him to death.

“I had to agree and apologized for the provocateurs. Now I feel like a hopeless prisoner of the Auschwitz concentration camp, writes Ahmedov and asks the society for help. — 06D-