Lawyer under Pressure for His Professional Activities

The lawyer Elchin Sadigov may be dismissed by the decision of the Bar Association of Azerbaijan.

Such a requirement was sent to the Bar by the judge in the case of the editor of the newspaper Khural Avaz Zeynalli, Ramella Allahverdiyeva.

A similar request to the Bar also came from the prosecution of the Neftchala district leading a criminal case against a local businessman Natig Huseynov, charged under Article 315.1 (resistance to authority).

According to Sadigov, the main reason for their dissatisfaction with his activities is that he does not give up, in contrast to many of his colleagues, the protection of opposition journalists, politicians and representatives of civil society.

However, the complaints only include formal reasons of an insignificant nature: in the first case, he left the room at the insistence of the defendant, without asking permission from the judge, and in the second case, he refused to sign the protocol for access to the criminal case because of the broken arm.

The practice of obstruction of lawyers by the overseeing public authority and even filing criminal cases against them under Article 289 of the Criminal Code (contempt of court) is common in Azerbaijan. E.g. in 2011, the Bar persecuted the lawyers Elchin Namazov, Khalid Bagirov and Osman Kazimov. They fell out of favor with the authorities during the criminal trial of the opposition leaders, who were arrested for taking part in a protest rally on April 2 last year.

The "fault" of the "unfavorable" lawyers, whose number reduces every year, is that they protect opposition activists persecuted for political reasons.

Several international human rights organizations in their statement noted that the sustained pressure on independent lawyers is a part of government policy aimed at discrimination against the interests of civil society. -17D-