Civil society asks the Attorney General about the death of Galandarov

Baku/02.05.17/Turan: The preventive reaction group, consisting of civil society representatives, sent a request to the country's prosecutor general in connection with the April 28 death in the investigative isolator of the blogger Mehman Galandarov. The letter notes that official structures claim suicide, which raises serious doubts. Mehman was a persistent person who always defended the interests of democracy and was not afraid of reprisals. On February 7, he came to the monument to Heydar Aliyev with a poster demanding the release of Giyas Ibrahimov and Bayram Mammadov, convicted for writing political slogans on this monument. On the same day he was arrested for three months on charges of drug trafficking (Article 234.2 of the Criminal Code). In the police, he was tortured, threatened to kill. The penitentiary service first denied Mehman's death, and then secretly buried him, without giving out the body to relatives and notifying him about the time and place of burial. All this, as well as testimonies of witnesses, indicate that he was killed as a result of torture. "We consider it necessary to thoroughly investigate this case and conduct exhumation. Examination of the body should be conducted with the participation of representatives of the public and independent experts, "it was noted in the appeal.

* The preventive response team is called upon to investigate the facts of pressure and harassment of civil society activists, journalists and politicians, to take possible measures to prevent such phenomena. The group was established in 2011 and its members are civil society activists of the country. -05D-