Rauf Mirkadyrov receives political refugee status in Switzerland

The columnist for the Zerkalo newspaper and political analyst Rauf Mirkadyrov was granted political refugee status in Switzerland. Turcan was informed about this by Mirkadyrov himself. The journalist was convicted in Azerbaijan on falsified charges of espionage in favor of Armenia. It was allegedly attracted to the secret cooperation with the Armenian special services by human rights activist Leila Yunus. The court did not prove the guilt of either Leila Yunus or her husband Arif in the course of high-profile trials in Baku in 2015, as well as Rauf Mirkadyrov himself.

Nevertheless, they were all sentenced to long terms of imprisonment and held in prison for one and a half years. Later, imprisonment of the couple Yunus and Mirkadyrov was replaced by conditional punishment and they left the prison. Yunus' spouses left Azerbaijan, and Mirkadyrov, the family of whom had previously received asylum in Switzerland, followed them. Mirkadyrov himself was arrested in Turkey and extradited to the authorities of Azerbaijan without any grounds. -02B-