New Prisoner Sentenced to Death Dies in Prison Hospital

According to the Human Rights Centre of Azerbaijan (HRCA), one of the oldest lifelong prisoners, Arif Zeynaddin Oglu Mahmudov, born in 1936, died of a heart attack in a medical institution of the Ministry of Justice (Central Prison Hospital) on February 17. He was sentenced to death in 1996, and after the abolition of the death penalty in February 1998, this penalty was replaced by life imprisonment.

The Azerbaijani legislation provides for the possibility of parole after serving 25 years of life imprisonment. But taking into account the average life expectancy in Azerbaijan, which is not more than 72 years, the authorized period means a death sentence for those who have been convicted in their old age. Even after the abolition of the death penalty, 47 of the 128 people formerly sentenced to death died, and many of them were younger than Mahmudov. To date, only two people formerly sentenced to death managed to spend 25 years in prison.

HRCA calls to reconsider the provisions of Article 57.3 of the Criminal Code and to make flexible the authorized period as envisaged by Resolution № R (76) 2 of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers with respect to the treatment of prisoners on long sentences. This period, giving the detainee a realistic chance of release in the case of correction could be part of the sentence and could be assigned by the judge when sentencing somebody to life imprisonment. -0--