State Penitentiary Service Denies Torture in Gobustan Prison

Baku / 11.09.18 / Turan: Mehman Sadigov, the head of the public relations service of the State Penitentiary Service (SPS), responded to the accusations of Akif Naghy, chairman of the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Life-Sentenced Persons. A. Naghy's address to the country's President was published on September 8 http://www.turan.az/ext/news/2018/9/free/Social/en/74895.htm

In the letter, Naghy reports numerous cases of violation of laws, bullying, torture of prisoners, corruption and extortion by the head of the Gobustan prison Aftandil Agayev, and the employee of this institution Adil Shirmammadov. Both were dismissed from previous posts for violations in their work, but were again appointed to various posts in the Penitentiary Service.

In a return statement, Mehman Sadigov highly assesses the business qualities of Agayev, considering him an experienced worker, coping with the heavy duties of the prison governor for dangerous criminals.

In Gobustan prison there are criminals who repeatedly violated the law, violating the rules of the regime in places of detention. The contingent of the Gobustan prison is different from those held in other prisons. To work with such a contingent in the Gobustan prison enough experienced workers, who are well aware of the specifics of the work, have been sent" said Sadigov.

"I understand the desire of the mother, whose son has been serving life imprisonment for already 23 years; she wants the sentence to be replaced by a 15-year sentence, and she has been raising this issue for many years. There can be no question of torture in Gobustan prison."

Sadigov said that the Penitentiary Service will conduct an investigation in due course. "It is very important to provide food to prisoners in accordance with the established diet; we monitor these issues, conduct our investigations, and if violations are found, appropriate measures will be taken. But nothing written by Akif Naghy is true," Mehman Sadigov repeated.

"Agayev has introduced the practice of shackling prisoners from poor families. Convicts are kept locked up with their hands behind their back, causing pain, and sometimes they are chained to the pipe opposite the chief's office - in the summer heat and in the winter frost, for minor offenses. Those guilty of minor offenses are first taken to the club, where they are severely beaten with the chief"s personal involvement. Then, with their hands clasped back, they are rigidly tied to the iron bed in the punishment cell. The severe measures of impact in the Gobustan jail do not lead to a correction of the convicts, and are more similar to the execution of a death penalty. The number of those killed in the Gobustan prison proves this statistics," Naghy noted in his address to the President.

The Gobustan prison (officially - the Prison of the Penitentiary Service of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Azerbaijan, "closed office" on the prisoners' slang) is an institution for serving a closed type of punishment. It is located 70 km from Baku and is intended for those sentenced to life imprisonment or long terms of imprisonment, as well as prisoners transferred here from other prisons for repeated violations of the regime. The limit of detention is 700 convicts, of whom about 250 are sentenced to life terms. -0-