U.S. Pledges Continued Focus On Political Prisoners In Azerbaijan

The United States said on Monday it will 'continue to be focused on' the issue of political prisoners during high-level engagements with Azerbaijan, TURAN's Washington correspondent report.

"This is a long process and it requires us to have continued engagement," State Department's principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told a daily briefing when asked by TURAN about recent high-level engagements with Baku which happened to happen without securing political prisoners in the country.

"It’s something that I would expect both the Secretary [of State] and Assistant Secretary [Jim] O’Brien and others to continue to be focused on," Patel went on to add.

In his latest phone call with President Ilham Aliyev, Blinken urged Azerbaijan to adhere to its international human rights obligations and commitments and release all those unjustly detained. "He called on Azerbaijan to do so expeditiously," the State Department said in the readout of the June 20 call.

Assistant Secretary O’Brien, who last week visited Azerbaijan, also told Congress that he would talk to Aliyev about the importance of respecting human rights. "That's a regular topic of conversation... and I look forward to taking up that conversation with him as well," he said.

Azerbaijan’s government has been accused of increasing its crackdown on media and civil society activism lately. Human rights organizations have documented at least 25 instances of the arrest or sentencing of journalists and activists since last fall, almost all of whom remain in custody.