Civil Society Calls on to Liberate Imprisoned Journalists

Baku/17.09.18/Turan: The Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety issued a joint statement by representatives of the media and civil society of the country with a call to the authorities of Azerbaijan to objectively investigate the circumstances of the death of Frangiz Huseynova, the mother of convicted Mehman Huseynov and emigrant human rights activist Emin Huseynov.

"Today, on the international day of solidarity of journalists, we call on the Azerbaijani authorities to investigate the strange circumstances of the death of Frangiz Huseynova, the mother of well-known Azerbaijani human rights defenders Mehman and Emin Huseynov, who blame the death of their mother on the ruling regime.

Hospitalized on 15 July 2017, Frangiz Huseynova died in a hospital in Baku on the night of 5 to 6 August 2018, without having the opportunity to see her son, Mehman, whose arrest was the main cause of her deteriorating health.

Mehman"s arrest was the second serious stress for Frangiz Huseynova. On August 8, 2014, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General's Office raided her house and searched it while investigating the criminal case against the Institute for Reporters" Freedom and Safety and several other local and international NGOs working in the human rights field in Azerbaijan. She was also illegally questioned twice in the case of the escape ofEmin Huseynov who was forced to hide in the Swiss embassy in Baku from August 2014 to June 2015, in order to avoid imprisonment that other well-known human rights defenders were subjected to during the repression unleashed against the civil society in mid-2014.

Because of the forced political exile of the elder son, Emin, in Switzerland and, Ibrahim, her middle son, in urgent military service, Mehman was the only one of the brothers who could take care of the mother's health and give her the moral support she needed on the difficult for her days. Despite numerous appeals from lawyers and Mehman Huseynov himself, the authorities did not allow him to be temporarily released from prison so that he could take care of his mother and provide her with the necessary moral support. He was only allowed to attend the funeral, where he stated that the authorities intentionally did not allow him to visit his mother in the hospital in order to cause her even more pain.

Despite the fact that the human rights community and the political opposition of Azerbaijan condemned the circumstances of death and urged the authorities to carry out an objective investigation in the tragic passing of the mother of the well-known critics of the regime, Azerbaijani law enforcement bodies have only nominally initiated a criminal case in the matter, still not recognizing the Huseynov family as the injured party. Furthermore, for over a month the investigative bodies have refused to provide the lawyers of the Huseynov family with the results of the post-mortem examination that was carried out at noon on August 6, 2018. Simultaneously, the investigative bodies of Azerbaijan prevented an alternative pathological anatomical examination.

This is not the first time when critics of the regime or their relatives die in dubious conditions while on a hospital bed. Under similar circumstances, on August 8, 2015, the ex-chairman of the IRFS board, journalist Rasim Aliyev, was delivered to the hospital where he died the very next morning.

Taking into account the reality of continued impunity for crimes against journalists, human rights defenders and their families, we call on the Azerbaijani authorities to urgently accelerate the investigation into the death of Frangiz Huseynova, to recognize the family as the injured party and also to provide the civil society with the needed assistance in carrying out an alternative investigation.

At the same time, we urge the international intergovernmental organizations and other specialized institutions to conduct their own parallel investigation into the circumstances of the death of Frangiz Huseynova.

We also insist on the immediate release from jail of all Azerbaijani prisoners of conscience and we call on the Azerbaijani authorities to stop all repressions both against the critics, their family members and against civil society as a whole," the statement says. -06D----