The chief lawyer of ANAS is suing the author of the article about the "Tartar case"

Baku/24.11.21/Turan: The Sabail District Court of Baku began the process on the claim of the head of the legal department of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan (ANAS) Kamal Aliyev against the employee of the demokratik.az website Osman Narimanoglu.

Narimanoglu told Turan that this week the first familiarization session of the court was held, at which the judge invited the parties to agree to an amicable agreement in order to terminate the process. The site's representative expressed his readiness to publish apologies and refutations, if there is a mutual desire not to sue. But the head of the legal department of the National Academy of Sciences K. Aliyev confirmed his claim and intention to seek punishment of the journalist.

According to Narimanoglu, the lawsuit concerns the entire text of the article "Look to whom Ramiz Mehdiyev entrusted the legal department of ANAS - the gray cardinal is connected with the Terter case?"  The article was published on the website demokratik.az on November 16, 2021. In it, the author writes about the activities of the President of the National Academy of Sciences Rami claims he took a pro-Russian stance when he served as head of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan.

The author of the article, highlighting the personnel reshuffle in the Academy of Sciences, believes that the President of ANAS Mehdiyev is ruining the Azerbaijani science. In the same publication, the journalist shows the connection between the pro-Russian orientation of Mehdiyev and his decision to appoint former judge Kamal Aliyev, who was dismissed from the judiciary for illegal judicial punishment of Azerbaijani servicemen unwanted by Russia, to the post of head of the legal department of ANAS.

According to Narimanoglu, at the preparatory session of the court, Aliyev focused on non-participation in the trials against the soldiers and officers of the Azerbaijani army, tortured, killed during interrogations, as well as convicted during the "investigation" of the so-called "Terter case".

However, as can be seen by the decree of President Ilham Aliyev dated June 10, 2008, Kamal Aliyev was appointed a member of the Tartar military court, and according to the testimony of the participants in the Tartar case, he passed sentences on the accused servicemen, the journalist said.

“We will show at the trial that I, as the author of the article, did not pursue selfish goals, but covered real events and made personal judgments, which corresponds to my legal rights. 

We will present documentary evidence of Kamal Aliyev's participation in the trials, which ended in illegal convictions of the servicemen," Narimanoglu said.

Subsequently, some of the convicted and killed before the trial soldiers and officers were posthumously rehabilitated by the Supreme Court, and those who remained in prison demand release because of their innocence. In 2017, Kamal Aliyev was dismissed from his position as a judge, worked as a lawyer for two years, and then Mehdiyev appointed him to the post of head of the legal department of ANAS.

"I got the impression that the plaintiff Kamal Aliyev is acting on the direct orders of Ramiz Mehdiyev," Narimanoglu said. He has not yet signed an agreement with a lawyer who will defend him at the trial.

The Department of Information and Public Relations of ANAS, in response to a request from the Turan agency, sent a statement from the Presidium of ANAS, which says that the site demokratik.az has repeatedly published materials containing insults to the Academy and its leaders. In this regard, a warning letter was sent to the editorial office of the site with a proposal to stop public attacks. But the site did not heed the warning, so a statement of claim was sent to the court.

Media expert Alasgar Mammadli, having familiarized himself with the suit, told Turan that the journalist used the fundamental right of the press to discuss and make assumptions. "Kamal Aliyev's suit is not based on facts, it can be rejected both due to the lack of legal grounds and the precedents in the European Court that ruled against the convictions of Khadija Ismail and other Azerbaijani journalists. In 2011, the President of Azerbaijan signed up to the European practice on the inadmissibility of convictions. journalists for their opinions in publications ("defamation)".

Azerbaijan is one of the leading countries in the world in terms of the number of convicted journalists. In March 2021, the last trial of this series ended, in which journalist, PFPA member Elchin Hasanzadeh and blogger Ibrahim Türksoy were sentenced to eight months in prison on charges of libel and insult. — 0—