Spouses Yunus can be put on the wanted list?

Baku/19.04.17/Turan: On Wednesday, at the Baku Court of Appeal (BAC), under the chairmanship of Mirpasha Huseynov, proceedings began in the case of human rights defender Leila Yunus and his husband the conflictologist Arif Yunus. They were arrested in the summer of 2014 in a criminal case against local and foreign NGOs. In August 2015 they were convicted for long terms of imprisonment, accusing them of committing economic crimes. After protests by international organizations in December 2015. The real terms of imprisonment were replaced by conditional punishment and they were released. In April 2016, the couple went abroad for treatment.

Consideration of the cassation appeal of the spouses by the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan has been repeatedly postponed. Finally, on December 27, the Supreme Court returned the case for reconsideration in BAC. Today the  trial in the BAC began with a discussion by the judge about the participation of Leila and Arif Yunus at the trial, lawyer Elchin Sadigov told Turan, saying there was no need for it. The lawyer motivated his position by the fact that to the first decision of the BAC there was no protest from the prosecutor's office, nor complaints from the victims. The Supreme Court appealed to the Yunus couple themselves with a request to make an acquittal. Therefore, the trial in the appellate court can be conducted without their participation, Sadigov said.

However, the state prosecutor Abbas Abbasli stated the need for the participation of the Yunus couple, citing the fact that the Supreme Court decision allegedly stated that the BAC should review the case with the conduct of the judicial investigation.

 However, the lawyer denied the presence in the Supreme Court's decision of a direct indication of the case with a repeated judicial investigation. Taking into account this position of the prosecution, the lawyer did not rule out that Yunus would be declared an international wanted man on the pretext of not appearing in court. The lawyer requested copies of a number of documents from the case file. The court granted motions and postponed the meeting on May 3 to transfer copies of the documents to the lawyer. -16B06