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HRW: Azerbaijan: Leading Rights Defender Arrested

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  • HRW: Azerbaijan: Leading Rights Defender Arrested

    Human Rights Watch
    July 31 2014


    Azerbaijan: Leading Rights Defender Arrested

    Release Leyla Yunus Immediately; Drop Bogus Charges Against Her and Her Husband

    (Berlin) - Azerbaijani authorities should immediately secure the
    release of leading human rights defender Leyla Yunus from pretrial
    custody, and drop the politically motivated charges against her and
    her husband Arif Yunus. The authorities should also end their ongoing
    harassment against the couple.

    "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 Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia
    director at Human Rights Watch. "The authorities should immediately
    end this campaign of intimidation against Azerbaijan's leading human
    rights defenders and allow them to work unimpeded."

    Azerbaijan's international partners, including the Council of Europe
    leadership and its member countries, should make clear that continued
    harassment of human rights defenders, and the Yunuses in particular,
    will have direct effects on their relationships with Azerbaijan's
    government.

    Leyla Yunus is the director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy,
    a human rights group formed in 1995 that has focused on combating
    politically motivated prosecutions, corruption, violence against
    women, and unlawful house evictions. The organization has also been
    involved in projects aimed at improving people-to-people dialogue
    between intellectuals and community leaders in Azerbaijan and Armenia,
    against the background of the unresolved conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh,
    the autonomous enclave in Azerbaijan primarily populated by ethnic
    Armenians.

    On July 30, 2014, at about 11:45 a.m., representatives of the Grave
    Crimes Investigation Unit of the General Prosecutor's Office, detained
    Leyla Yunus on her way to a conference at a partner organization's
    office and drove her to the general prosecutor's office, Arif Yunus
    told Human Rights Watch.

    Shortly thereafter, about six men in civilian clothes rang the bell at
    the Yunus's residence. Arif Yunus refused to open the door until he
    could summon his lawyer, but by the time his lawyer arrived, the men
    were gone. Yunus decided to turn himself in to the general
    prosecutor's office and arrived there with his lawyer shortly after 1
    p.m.

    Yunus told Human Rights Watch that he and his wife were accused of
    spying for the Armenian secret services and interrogated in separate
    rooms. He said that they chose to remain silent and not to respond to
    any questions because the charges were so humiliating and absurd.

    The investigators claimed that the Yunuses have used foreign grant
    money to recruit Azerbaijani citizens to participate in second-track
    diplomacy efforts over the unresolved conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh,
    and used this as a cover for espionage.

    Investigators also claimed that the couple operated an unregistered
    nongovernmental organization and failed to pay taxes on grants they
    received. While it is true that the Institute for Peace and Democracy
    is not registered, the authorities make it almost impossible for human
    rights organizations in Azerbaijan to register.

    After six hours of interrogation, the prosecutor's office pressed
    charges against both Leyla and Arif Yunus. Criminal charges against
    Leyla Yunus include treason (criminal code article 274), fraud causing
    large damages (article 178.3.2), illegal entrepreneurship by an
    organized group (article 192.2.2), tax evasion (article 213), and
    falsifying official documents (article 320). Arif Yunus was charged
    with treason and fraud.

    For health considerations, the authorities released Arif Yunus under
    house arrest and police supervision, while Baku's Nasimi District
    Court sent Leyla Yunus directly from the courtroom to pretrial custody
    for three months. Arif Yunus told Human Rights Watch that his wife
    suffers from severe diabetes and requires special meals at certain
    intervals. He said he feared the authorities would not provide her
    with adequate care in detention.

    "This arrest and the charges have been in the making for some months
    now and appear to be in retaliation for the Yunuses human rights work
    and their outspoken criticism of the authorities," Denber said. "The
    authorities should immediately release Leyla Yunus from pretrial
    detention and drop the charges in the absence of any credible evidence
    that they are justifiable."

    On April 28, Baku airport police prevented the couple from leaving the
    country, confiscated their passports, and subjected them to a 24-hour
    ordeal of interrogations and house searches that led to Arif Yunus's
    hospitalization with hypertension. The prosecutor's office
    subsequently designated them witnesses in a treason investigation
    against an Azerbaijani journalist and civil society activist, Rauf
    Mirgadirov, who was deported from Turkey on April 19 and then arrested
    in Baku.

    Since then the authorities have repeatedly summoned the couple for
    interrogations. However, the Yunuses have refused to cooperate with
    the investigation until their passports are returned and their freedom
    of movement restored. Arif Yunus said he believed an open letter Leyla
    Yunus sent to the president of Azerbaijan a day earlier about the
    arrests of youth activists, entitled "What Are You Afraid of, Mr.
    President?" infuriated the authorities and possibly led to her
    detention.

    Azerbaijan has a long history of using bogus charges to imprison its
    critics, including on treason charges, Human Rights Watch said. In the
    past two years, Azerbaijani authorities have brought or threatened
    unfounded criminal charges against over 40 political activists,
    journalists, bloggers, and human rights defenders, most of whom are
    behind bars.

    In August 2011, violating a court injunction, the Baku authorities
    demolished without warning a building owned by Leyla Yunus as part of
    a government land clearance to make way for a park and business area.
    The building housed the Institute for Peace and Democracy and two
    other human rights groups. Yunus had repeatedly criticized the
    government's redevelopment plans for the area.

    The crackdown on critical voices continued even as, on May 15,
    Azerbaijan took over the rotating chairmanship of the Committee of
    Ministers of the Council of Europe, Europe's foremost human rights
    body.

    "Azerbaijan takes pride in chairing this important regional
    institution, yet routinely violates the very values and rights
    protections on which it is built and for which it exists," Denber
    said. "The least Azerbaijan's partners in the Council of Europe can
    now do is to urge the government to release Leyla Yunus from pretrial
    custody and end its escalating persecution of government critics."

    http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/31/azerbaijan-leading-rights-defender-arrested

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