Rufat Safarov's mother banned from leaving Azerbaijan

The mother of the arrested head of the human rights organization "Protection Line" Rufat Safarov, Tahira Tahirgizi, has been banned from leaving Azerbaijan.

Tahirgizi herself told Turan about this.

According to her, the restriction on leaving the country was imposed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan.

"Rufat's father Eldar Sabiroglu suffers from a severe form of Parkinson's disease. Both President Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva know about this. Several years ago, we were even going to sell our apartment to pay for Eldar's surgery. The President and his wife, even without our request, showed humanism and took on the costs of the surgery in Turkey. They themselves know that Eldar undergoes examination in Turkey every six months. In the last week, Eldar's condition has sharply worsened and we bought plane tickets to bring him to Turkey. But today it became known that I was banned from leaving the country," Tahirgizi said.

She believes that the Interior Ministry's decision against her is unfair and does not comply with the law.

"This decision is wrong from a humanist point of view. My son was arrested on trumped-up charges and now they are tormenting his sick father," said Takhirgyzy.

It was not possible to get comments from the Interior Ministry.

* Rufat Safarov was detained on December 3. He was charged under three articles of the Criminal Code - 178.3.2 (fraud committed with causing major damage), 221.1 (hooliganism) and 127.2.3. (Intentional infliction of less serious harm to health, in a generally dangerous way or for hooligan motives). The next day, the court sentenced him to pretrial detention for a period of 4 months.

Safarov denied the charges and stated that he was being persecuted for his human rights activities and the award of the US State Department award.