SOS! SOS! SOS!

4 MAY 2014

The Grave Offense Department of the Office of the Prosecutor General of Azerbaijan has established a Special Investigation Group headed by Eldar Ahmedov, 3^rd Class State Counselor of Justice, investigators Parviz Ibayev, Ibrahim Lemberanski, Sanan Pashayev, etc. The group targets to frame up a case to accuse Rauf Mirgadirov, Leyla Yunus and her husband Arif Yunusov of high treason and espionage for Armenia. Rauf Mirgadirov is an honored journalist of Azerbaijan and a Gerd Bucerius International Prize Winner. Leyla Yunus is Director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy, Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour and Winner of the International Theodor-Haecker-Prize. Historian ArifYunusov has authored 8 monographs and over 230 articles.

With this aim in mind the officers of the Prosecutor’s Office go beyond the law of Azerbaijan, the international law, rules of morality.

Sh. Hasanova, Judge of Nasimi District Court of Baku city, gave an unlawful ruling to arrest Rauf Mirgadirov, illegally extradited from Turkey and arrested on April 19. He is under a 3-month-arrest. The Prosecutor’s Office did not present any proof of his guilt.

On April 28 Leyla and Arif Yunusov were detained in the airport while trying to fly to Brussels at the invitation of the European Endowment for Democracy. When detained their passports were taken away, they were searched, their laptop and personal documents were seized. On April 28 starting from 22.00 pm till 04.00 am on April 29 the Yunusovs were unlawfully detained without presenting any document to state a reason of detainment and a search warrant. Lawyer Khalid Bagirov, who came to the airport, was not let in.

The investigators of the Prosecutor’s Office further acted exactly as did the Gestapo of Hitler’s Germany and the NKVD of Stalin’s USSR. They pushed them into the car using force and brought them to their residence place. Having not presented a search warrant, they demand that the Yunusovs open the apartment. Around 40 police and secret service officers gathered outside. Having not stood up to stress, Arif Yunusov began to black out. But investigator Lemberanski refused to allow the ambulance to take Arif Yunusov to hospital.Only after 30 minutes thanks to the demands of the persistent journalists Arif Yunusov was taken to hospital where he was immediately put into intensive care unit.

The officers kept on maltreating Leyla Yunus. His violence against the 59-year-old woman Chief of Yasamal District Police Department of Baku city, Colonel Ismail Asadov fully excused saying to the journalists, ‘She is not Azeri! She is Armenian! And she deserves to be treated exactly like that – to be beaten and raped …’

Leyla Yunus was kept continuously under arrest for more than 26 hours. Neither proof of guilt, nor arrest warrant was presented.

Appeal of Leyla

«My grandmother was ethnic German. In 1941 her family was sent into exile to Kazakhstan, where none of them survived. All her life long she concealed her ethnicity and maiden surname. She was so badly scared that even in 1986 before she died she did not answer my question about her mother’s name.

My husband’s mother was ethnic Armenian. She died long ago. But when she was alive, her family carefully covered up her ethnicity.

Down with Nazism!! Nazism which dwelled in the minds of people and brings horrible harvest: the pro-governmental mass media smear my family and friends saying that I am a ‘mongrel’, ‘Russian-speaking’, ‘Armenian’ ….

All her life my mother was afraid to tell that her mother was German, and now my daughter is afraid to tell that her grandmother is Armenian…

Fostering hatred to another nation, where dirty politicians took aboard citizens of almost all post-Soviet republics, is the worst deed of horror of today.

I have sacrificed my life to struggle for human rights. In 2012 I and my colleague in Armenia launched the unique joint Azerbaijani-Armenian website-platform for peaceful dialogue to reach understanding and break enmity.

My activities are obviously very efficient, as today the Prosecutor’s Office is instructed to frame up a case, imprison and kill in prison.

I am an elderly woman, 150 cm tall, and stand proud that ALL the criminal mechanism of the criminal power in Azerbaijan is mobilized to destroy me.

There are people and unpeople. The real men are my grandfather Teymur Useynov, one of the creators of the Azerbaijani cinematograph, and his colleague Amo Beknazarov, whose name is born by the film studio in Yerevan. The unpeople are torturing and beating to death in prison cells.

I am not afraid of death, I am not afraid of prison. I stand proud that I have turned to be dangerous for the corrupt criminal regime, which occupied my motherland Azerbaijan…

Yes, like other mothers I also want to hope that my husband will survive and my daughter will not lose her dad and mom ….

FOR OUR AND YOUR FREEDOM!!

Leyla Yunus