NDI has no claims to Anar Mammadov and others

Baku Court of Grave Crimes chaired by Rauf Aliyev continues the trial over the head of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Training Center (EMDTC) Anar Mammadli, executive director of the NGO, Bashir Suleymanli and the head of the Public Association for International Cooperation Volunteers (PAICV), Elnur Mammadov.

All of them are charged under the Criminal Code Article 5 - tax evasion, illegal business, abuse of office, embezzlement on a large scale and official forgery. The criminal case was opened at the end of October 2013. On December 17 Mammadli was taken into custody and two others are under house arrest. May 5 the trial continued with victim testimony.

At the meeting on 6 May 12 victims gave evidence. All of them said they did not consider themselves victim and had no claims against the defendants.

Then the lawyer for Suleymanli, Alibaba Rzayev presented to the court a letter from the head office of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) USA.

The letter confirmed that NDI provided a grant to EMDTC and PAICV.

Checking by NDI showed that the funds provided were used as intended and the American organization has no claims to the performers.

Hearing testimonies begins at the trial.

The trial will continue on May 7 at 14.00. -06C-