There are no fewer politically motivated repressions – Khadija Ismail

Baku/21.09.21/Turan: Recently, relatives of arrested activists and journalists, as well as some observers have noted a slump of public interest and attention of international organizations to the problem of political prisoners in Azerbaijan. Is this really the case?

The journalist-investigator and human rights activist, Hadija Ismail, commenting on the situation at the request of Turan, noted that the issue of political prisoners in Azerbaijan has not lost its topicality; it's just that the war in Karabakh has pushed it slightly aside. However, there are no fewer political prisoners and politically motivated repressions. True, there are no arrests of well-known civil society activists now as was the case in 2013-14. At the same time, the activity of independent NGOs and public associations whose activities were restricted at the legislative level, also decreased.

Nevertheless, pressures on activists and repressions are presently performed through discrediting them - through interference in their personal lives, so-called "intimate revelations," Ismail continued.

An index of the large-scale and systematic work to collect "compromising material" on critics of the government was the "Pegasus" scandal following which the fact of surveillance and interference in the private life of hundreds of journalists and activists became public.

"Traditional" politically motivated arrests are ongoing though on a smaller scale. Ismail does not consider the court's sentences on conditional punishment of critics of the government to be "mitigation", as it was with the participants of the "Karabakh action" on July 14-15, 2020.The government simply got down to "alternative measures" against its opponents trying to create an impression of "policy mitigation" among the international community. However, suspended sentences are also a punishment to restrict the political activity of citizens.

Do the criminal cases against former high-ranking officials, such as Eldar Hasanov (former Ambassador and ex-Prosecutor General), Jahangir Hajiyev (ex-head of the International Bank of Azerbaijan OJSC), etc., have a political subtext given that that they "fell victims" of intra-governmental squabbles?

Can they be recognized as political prisoners, as it was with Farhad Aliyev and Ali Insanov at the time? Answering this question, Ismail stressed that if Aliyev and Insanov had been arrested under the economic charges on which they were convicted, they would not have been recognized as political prisoners.

Initially, they were arrested on charges of preparing a coup, which is a political crime but no evidence of their guilt was presented.

Also, there was no consensus on the recognition of Insanov as a political prisoner. He was recognized as such when new far-fetched charges were brought against him a few months before the end of his term.

"As for Jahangir Hajiyev, we investigated major facts of the corruption in the International Bank of Azerbaijan as far back as in 2010. Evidence of corruption was the facts of large real estate and huge expenses in London by Hajiyev's wife.

The political context in the Hajiyev case is not that he was arrested but that other officials responsible for embezzling the bank's funds, including employees of the Ministry of Finance, were not arrested," Ismail said.

As for Eldar Hasanov, judging by the statements of Hasanov himself, he does not deny the facts of corruption as claiming that they were committed for "state purposes". At the same time, Hasanov does not want to disclose details as saying that this will damage "inter-state relations".

"I think that this is not a very good argument in favor of recognizing him as a political prisoner," Ismail said.

To her thinking, the political context in the cases of these officials is that they were arrested only now while no other officials who were convicted of corruption were arrested.

The head of the Monitoring Center for Political Prisoners, Elshan Hasanov, also believes that politically motivated arrests continue in Azerbaijan.

"For many years, the number of political prisoners in Azerbaijan has exceeded 100 people. Today there are 122 of them, including journalists, bloggers, political, civil, religious activists, as well as military personnel convicted in the "Terter case" and Ganja events.

"While some people are released, others are immediately arrested," Hasanov told the Turan news agency.

As for criminal cases against officials, there is a "political subtext"in the cases of some of them. "However, they meet no criteria of "political prisoner" though some of them face blatant violations of their rights.

Thus, Eldar Hasanov, despite the ECHR decisions, is not provided with proper treatment. Jahangir Hajiyev had problems with access to lawyers.

Irrespective of their characteristics, their personality and their perception in society, they, as citizens of Azerbaijan, have the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the European Convention, so these rights must be respected, " Hasanov said.- 06B-