Another heartbreaking story of a Ganja convict

Baku/07.08.19/Turan: On 7 August the website vetenugrunda.az published a letter from the convict in the Ganja case, Shahin Verdiyev.

The letter was sent to the mother from the prison, which describes the horrific torture after the arrest of Verdiev in Ganja.

The letter says that on July 10, 2018, Shahin Verdiev witnessed events in the center of Ganja by accident. Seeing a crowd of people, he, along with his friend Elmir Huseynzade, went towards the executive branch and further towards the Ganja hotel. There they saw the police carrying someone in their arms.

"People ran, shouted, and we decided to leave from there," Veliyev writes. A few days later, in the village of Hoylu, Terter District, he was detained by police and brought to Ganja with tied hands.

The police department showed him a video and asked if he was on the video, and what was he doing there? Veliyev gave a positive answer and said that he was an accidental witness. Immediately after that, several people began to beat him.

Beatings and bullying lasted several days. He was required to admit that he knew the organizers of the riots and, in particular, a man named Rashad who was killed during the arrest.

"As soon as I said that I did not know this person, the beatings resumed until I lost consciousness. When I woke up, the doctors gave me an injection, saying that my health was bad, but the police ordered them to bring me to conscience and leave," Veliyev writes.

The beatings were replaced by torture with electric shocks and stun guns.

"Periodically, unknown persons appeared in civilian uniforms who demanded that the testimony be signed. Attempts to read what is written in these testimonies ended in beating. At the same time, a person calmly watched what happened, who identified himself as my lawyer," Veliyev writes.

Such torture and bullying lasted several months. On July 25, Veliyev, along with other detainees, was taken to the Kurdakhany prison, he writes in his letter to his mother.

It should be noted that this is not the first such letter from prison, testifying to the wild torture of dozens of those arrested in the "Ganja case."

* On July 3, 2018, a resident of Ganja, Yunis Safarov, committed an armed attempt on the mayor of Ganja, Elmar Veliyev. The reason for the attack was regular insults and humiliation against the residents of the city by the mayor.

On July 10, city residents gathered for a rally in support of Yunis Safarov. The authorities declared this action an attempt to seize power by religious radicals and declared its members terrorists. Subsequently, more than 70 people were arrested; at least five more were killed. -02B-