Violence against a human rights activist at the Court of Appeal

Baku/22.04.22/Turan: A preparatory meeting on the complaint of the convicted leader of the "Citizens and Development" Party Aliyev was held at the Court of Appeal on Friday. He appealed the decision of Yasamal court of 15 April which convicted him of slandering to border guard captain Ramin Adilov.

Aliyev, who was taken to court, refused to speak. His lawyer Javad Javadov said that according to Article 64 of the Constitution no one can be convicted for one and the same crime repeatedly.  However, Aliyev had already been sentenced on January 13 to five months of imprisonment for one and the same fact - slandering the border guard officers.

The court scheduled an examination of the complaint in the essence for April 29.

Journalists and human rights activists were not allowed to the trial. At the same time, the police used force. Rufat Safarov, the head of NGO "Defence Line" was detained and beaten. They pushed him into a car and he was kept there for 20 minutes and released after the trial was over.

"All this is an evidence to the fact that there is no free trial in the country and that everything is decided by the police. Human rights activists cannot even attend an open trial," Safarov told the Turan news agency.

* On November 30, 2021 a helicopter MI-17 of Frontier Troops of Azerbaijan crashed 70 km from Baku. At that, 14 officers were killed and two survived.

Ali Aliyev expressed doubt that someone could have survived in the crash. After that, the two surviving officers sued him for defamation. The court satisfied the first suit in January and the second on April 15. -16B-