First ruling on Tartar case cancelled

Baku/09.02.22/Turan: The Prosecutor General of Azerbaijan annulled a ruling in the case of one of the "Tartar case" defendants - Elchin Guliyev.

To recall, the serviceman died during the investigation and the prosecutor's office terminated the case against him, but not on the grounds of his acquittal.

Now, in the course of the re-investigation, a new decision will also be issued in relation to Guliev.

On February 7, Guliyev's mother, Valida Akhmedova, was invited to the Investigation Department of the General Prosecutor's Office, where she was handed a ruling cancelling the previous decision in her son's case.

Note that Guliev was arrested in May 2017 and tortured to death. In December 2017, his case was closed. The military man's mother did not agree with this and sued the prosecutor's office but in vain. Now her complaint is in the European Court of Justice.

She considers the cancellation of the previous decision on her son's case as the beginning of the process of his rehabilitation.   The woman is convinced that all the victims in the case - those who were killed during the investigation and those who were sentenced to long terms - should be exonerated.

"The parents and loved ones of these people also suffered. Some were fired from their jobs, many earned illnesses from stress. All these experiences and the moral damage should be compensated.

Those who ordered and performed tortures must be punished. All those involved in these monstrous crimes, from higher ranks to the rank and file, should be punished," the woman said.

The head of the Baku Human Rights Club Rasul Jafarova believes that the above decision of the prosecutor's office opens up the possibility to terminate the criminal cases, to acquit and rehabilitate all the defendants in the case.

"This is the first step and it encourages that the same decisions will be taken in respect of others," Jafarov told Turan.

To recall, total of 25 people were sentenced to long terms in the "Tartar case," and another 11 died from tortures during the investigation.

All the arrested were recognized as political prisoners by local human rights defenders.

Several military personnel were convicted for tortures of those arrested, and six of them are in custody. However, none of the torture perpetrators were convicted of murder. They were convicted for abuse of power, negligence, etc.

*On May 7, 2017, the General Prosecutor's Office, State Security Service, Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry of Azerbaijan reported on detention of a group of servicemen and civilians for espionage in favor of Armenian special services.

The prosecutor's office opened a criminal case under Article 274 (high treason) of the Criminal Code.  The detainees were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. However, it soon became known that during the investigation, at least 11 suspects were killed as a result of tortures. Four of the murdered were later acquitted, and the investigators who fabricated charges against them were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.

On December 18, 2021, the General Prosecutor's office announced that it had reopened criminal investigations into the Teter case.-06B-