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Azerbaijan accuses rights activist of spying for Armenia

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  • Azerbaijan accuses rights activist of spying for Armenia

    Global Post
    July 31 2014

    Azerbaijan accuses rights activist of spying for Armenia


    Azerbaijani authorities alleged Thursday that a prominent human rights
    activist charged with treason fraud, Leyla Yunus, collaborated with
    the spy agencies of arch-enemy Armenia.

    "It is established that in 2002 Leyla Yunus and her husband Arif
    Yunus... had trained the journalist Rauf Mirkadirov in espionage and
    has since organised several of his trips to Armenia," the Azerbaijan's
    prosecutor general's office said in a statement.

    It alleged that Arif Yunus, an independent political analyst, had
    joined several of the trips where they met with Armenian intelligence
    officials.

    It charged that Mirkadirov, who was arrested and charged with treason
    in April, helped Leyla and Arif Yunus pass on to Armenian intelligence
    photographs of maps showing the location of military units, airfields
    and other strategic sites.

    Leyla Yunus, 57, an award-winning campaigner, was charged on Wednesday
    with treason, tax evasion, large-scale fraud and falsifying documents,
    according to her lawyer Dzhavad Dzhavadov.

    Her 59-year-old husband was charged with treason and fraud.

    A fierce critic of Azerbaijan's poor rights record, Leyla Yunus is
    head of one of Azerbaijan's leading rights groups, the Institute for
    Peace and Democracy in Baku.

    She has won several foreign prizes and honours for her work.

    Leyla Yunus has long worked with Armenian activists advocating the
    reconciliation of the two countries, which have been locked in a
    decades-long conflict over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region.

    The prosecutor general's office also accused Yunus of carrying out
    propoganda activities aimed at getting Azerbaijan to recognise
    Armenia's possession of Nagorny Karabakh following a 1988-1994
    conflict that left more than 30,000 dead.

    Any dissent in Azerbaijan is usually met with a tough government response.

    Rights groups say the government has been clamping down on opponents
    since President Ilham Aliyev's election to a third term last year.

    Human Rights Watch called Thursday for the immediate release of Leyla
    Yunus and her husband from pre-trial detention and for the changes
    against them to be dropped.

    "The context leading up to these recent charges, including the
    harassment they have endured over the past four months, make it clear
    that the charges against Leyla and Arif Yunus are bogus and intended
    to silence them," said HRW's deputy chief for Europe and Central Asia,
    Rachel Denber.

    "The authorities should immediately end this campaign of intimidation
    against Azerbaijan's leading human rights defenders and allow them to
    work unimpeded," she said in a statement.

    The Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muiznieks,
    on his Twitter account called the charges against Yunis a reminder of
    the difficulties rights defenders face in Azerbaijan and urged the
    government to comply with its human rights obligations.

    eg-rl/rmb


    http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/140731/azerbaijan-accuses-rights-activist-spying-armenia-0

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