Witnesses against Amiraslanov Сonfused

Yesterday the court in Sabirabad held a hearing on the criminal case of Ilham Amiraslanov - an activist from the headquarters of the civil society Kura protecting the rights of the victims of the floods in May and June 2010.

Amiraslanov is charged with Article 228.1 of the Criminal Code (possession of firearms and ammunition), which involves hard labor for up to two years, or imprisonment for up to three years. He was arrested on June 8 on charges of possessing a Makarov pistol and ammunition. Amiraslanov originally stated that the weapon was planted on him, and the confession was made under torture.

The hearing was scheduled for 15.30, but started after an hour delay and lasted for 3.5 hours. The court heard the testimony of two employees of the Office of Fight against Organized Crime (OCD) of the Interior Ministry and two witnesses.

OCD employee Rustam Safarov said that the operation to arrest Amiraslanov was conducted on the basis of information that he had a firearm. On the morning of June 8 a panel of three investigators and two public witnesses went from Baku to Sabirabad.

The witnesses claimed that the operation involved only them, and not additional forces, and the local police had not been informed.

The witnesses recounted that Amiraslanov was wearing a coffee-colored shirt and that he was seized with a packet of cigarettes, a folding knife, AZN 1 and a Makarov pistol. But none of them could say exactly what time the arrest operation started, the home inspection, the record of the police, their leaving Sabirabad and the delivery of the detained to Baku.

Next were numerous contradictions in the testimony. For example, the investigators said Amiraslanov was detained on his way home to the village Askerbeyli, whereas public witness Dargah Guliyev claimed Amiraslanov was detained when leaving the village Askerbeyli. The operatives claimed Amiraslanov voluntarily pulled a pistol from his belt and handed it to them, whereas public witness Samir Mamedov said Amiraslanov was grabbed by his hand as he tried to pull a gun.

The witnesses were confused and contradictory when they described how Amiraslanov got ammunition for the pistol from the basement of his house.

The investigative protocol was drafted on the second floor of the police office in Sabirabad with the detainee, three detectives and two witnesses. The witness Samir Mammadov said that he read the report immediately after the preparation and signed it, and Dargah Guliyev said that he had signed the protocol after it was read by the head of the combat unit Rovshan Jamalov.

Both public witnesses with uncertain activity were invited to participate in the operation, when early in the morning of June 8 they happened to be at the administration building, according to the version of one of them alone, but according to the other separately.

As the operatives claimed, both public witnesses were close to them during the arrest of Amiraslanov.

When asked by the lawyer Samir Isayev why the detectives believed that Amiraslanov would not open fire with his weapon and why they thus endangered the lives of the witnesses, the investigators were unable to give a clear answer.

But most importantly, as the lawyer said, the investigators grossly violated the rights of Amiraslanov and did not make a report on the detention and search immediately after the detection of the weapon, and took the evidence not in place, but later in the police building without a lawyer.

The trial ended at 20.00. The date of the next court hearing is still unknown. The progress was monitored by OSCE, the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly, the staff of the civil society Kura, Turan Information Agency, and a human rights web portal Objective TV.-0 -