Police threaten political prisoner's wife with placement in mental hospital

Baku/03.12.22/Turan: Wife of political prisoner Agil Humbatov has appealed to Turan about the threat she received from the Baku city police department.

"On Monday, November 28 (2022), I intended to go from my home in Zira settlement in Baku to hold a protest action demanding a fair trial of my husband's case in the Supreme Court. At 11 p.m. I saw two police cars outside my house. I was forcibly put in one of them and taken to the Baku city police department.  There, officer Tarhan Aliyev, talking politely to me, promised to fulfil my demands for reconsideration of my husband's case and social assistance for our three children. He asked me to stop the protests. Another officer, name unknown, spoke rudely and said that I was a bad mother because I was leaving my two young children at home, leaving for Baku. For this, the police will declare me insane, place me in a psychiatric hospital and send the children to an orphanage."

"I was warned that if I held a protest again, the threat of the policeman would be carried out," she said.

According to Aygun Gumbatova, she does have to leave her two children, six and three and a half years old, locked up at home, as she leaves with her older, ten-year-old son to see a doctor in Baku. There is no one to look after the remaining children at home.

The older boy has autism. The family receives 280 manats for their sick son and the Party of People's Front of Azerbaijan helps. She has no money for taxis; she takes three buses with her ill son to Baku and then back again.

Aigun Humbatova accuses the authorities of convicting her husband for attempted murder, although he is innocent and in fact punished for active participation in opposition rallies," she says.

Her husband was the sole breadwinner of the family, earning money by collecting and selling scrap metal. Aygun and her three children have to live on a starvation diet, while she also has to send food parcels to her husband in prison.

A. Gumbatova's demands include a fair examination of her husband's case in the Supreme Court, provision of social benefits for three children instead of one, provision of a social worker to help with childcare, free speech therapy for children, and treatment of Agil Gumbatov in a clinic of the penitentiary system. Convict Gumbatov is ill and his wife believes that the penitentiary system does not provide his spouse with the necessary medical care.

"No matter how much the police intimidate me, I will fight for my husband and children to the end. I am not afraid of their threats. I ask journalists to disseminate what I have said, my hope is to get help from society. Agil Humbatov is not to blame, his children should not die of hunger," said the wife of a political prisoner.

It should be reminded that in November 2021 the Baku Court of Grave Crimes sentenced Agil Humbatov, a member of the Party of People's Front of Azerbaijan, to 10 years of imprisonment. He was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for intentional causing grievous bodily harm by publicly dangerous means from hooliganism (Article 126.2.4 of the Criminal Code, which provides for up to 12 years of imprisonment). At first Gumbatov pleaded guilty, but then during the investigation he announced that he had not been involved in the conflict, had not fought or stabbed, and the criminal case had been falsified to punish him for his active opposition activities.  Gumbatov retracted his initial testimony as stating that he had given it under torture.

Agil Gumbatov was detained on 11 August last year and accused of stabbing Zira resident Yamen Mamedov. 

The Interior Ministry denied Gumbatova's statement about the threats. Elshad Hajiyev, head of the Interior Ministry press service, told Turan that Gumbatova has repeatedly made statements that are not true.

"The police does not deprive people of their maternal rights or place them in psychiatric hospitals," the Interior Ministry spokesman added.-0-