Mother of Political Prisoner Reports on New Torture of Her Son

Baku / 11.05.18 / Turan: The mother of the deputy head of the movement Muslim Unity Abbas Huseynov, who is kept in the Gobustan prison, said about new tortures over him.

According to Rahima Huseynova, her son told her about it on May 10, when he called her from prison.

According to her, the last two days Abbas has been tied to an iron pillar since morning and kept in the sun all day. "Today was the day of his telephone conversation. He phoned later than usual and said he had just been untied from the pillar," Huseynova said in a conversation with Turan.

She recalled that at the end of April her son was beaten and put in a cooler for sending congratulations to the leader of the Popular Front Party Ali Kerimli in the media.

According to Huseynova, she applied to the Penitentiary Service, the Ombudsman and the Baku office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on the fact of torture.

"The reaction was only from the Red Cross. Their staff visited Abbas. He told them about what had been done to him, but after the representatives of the Red Cross left, Abbas was again tortured and tied to a pillar," Huseynova said.

However, in the Public Relations Department of the Penitentiary Service, they denied allegations of torture against Huseynov, calling them "fiction".

In the Baku office of the ICRC, information on the meeting of representatives of the Red Cross with Abbas Huseynov was not commented.

"ICRC representatives visit places of detention. However, the identity of the prisoners visited, or the issues discussed with them are not disclosed, since they are confidential," said the head of the ICRC's public relations department Ilaha Huseynova.

Earlier, a group of human rights defenders appealed to state agencies of Azerbaijan with a request to investigate information about torture. However, no reaction came.

Abbas Huseynov was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment for the Nardaran events of 2015. -06B--