Police Hide Place of Detention of NIDA Activist from Relatives

The fate of the blogger and activist of the opposition youth NIDA entity Zaur Gurbanli detained by police on Saturday morning remains unclear. As of 23:00 Sunday on the place of his detention there was no information at the relatives of the activist, or at his attorney, or at members of the movement NIDA.

 Gurbanli was arrested on Saturday morning in front of his home in the town of Khirdalan.

At the same time the office of another youth organization Positive Changes was visited by several persons in plain clothes who identified themselves as employees of the Main Department for Combating Organized Crime (MDCOC) of the MIA. They searched the office, confiscating printed materials relating to the organization NIDA. Then Gurbanli himself was brought to the office and taken the recognition that the materials belonged to NIDA.

Among the seized materials there were still not distributed booklets, which depicted in profile the silhouette of a man's head, similar to President Ilham Aliyev with the inscription: "I will go in 2013, if you become a member of NIDA".

However, according to members of the movement, that is only a material that presents NIDA and do not call for anything.

 On appeal to the MDCOC and the Interior Ministry to establish the place of Gurbanli, NIDA activists and relatives of the activist received no response.

Remain unanswered also the phone calls to the hotline of the General Prosecutor's Office, Prosecutor's Office of Baku and the Ombudsman.

The lawyer Asabali Mustafayev regarded it as a "violation of the law." "According to the recently enacted new law, the detainee either at the police or at the Ministry of National Security first of all had to be given an opportunity to call his relatives and tell them about his location," Mustafayev said.