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Azerbaijan: Opposition Youth Activists on Trial

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  • Azerbaijan: Opposition Youth Activists on Trial

    Azerbaijan: Opposition Youth Activists on Trial

    Reuters, UK
    March 31 2006

    30 Mar 2006 21:38:18 GMT

    Source: Human Rights Watch

    (New York, March 31, 2006) - The Azerbaijani government must ensure a
    fair trial for three opposition youth leaders whose trial begins
    today in Baku, Human Rights Watch said today. The case against the
    youth leaders originated with their arrest before the November 2005
    parliamentary polls that the Organization for Security and
    Cooperation in Europe, the European Union and others declared to have
    fallen well short of international standards. Ruslan Bashirli, head
    of the Yeni Fikir (New Thinking) youth group, is charged with
    attempting to forcefully overthrow the government and of engaging in
    illegal business activities. Yeni Fikir deputy heads Said Nuri and
    Ramin Tagiev face identical charges.

    "The context and timing of the arrest of the Yeni Fikir leaders
    suggests that the case is politically motivated," said Holly Cartner,
    executive director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia
    division. "It also casts an even darker shadow on the 2005
    parliamentary elections, which were blatantly fraudulent."

    Azerbaijani authorities arrested the three Yeni Fikir leaders in
    August and September 2005, in the run-up to the November
    parliamentary elections. Yeni Fikir is closely aligned to the
    opposition Popular Front Party. Prior to the elections, authorities
    arrested dozens of other individuals, including many former
    government officials and prominent business leaders, who are alleged
    to have ties to opposition parties. These individuals similarly face
    charges of attempting to overthrow the government and committing
    other crimes against the state.

    On August 6, law enforcement officers in camouflage uniforms and
    black masks arrested Ruslan Bashirli. The next day the Prosecutor
    General's Office charged Bashirli with attempting to forcefully
    overthrow the government and accused him of meeting with Armenian
    security service officers in Georgia in July and accepting U.S.$2,000
    from them. Bashirli was then questioned for two days in the presence
    of a state-appointed lawyer instead of the lawyer he had explicitly
    chosen at the time as defense counsel. Bashirli informed his own
    lawyer that during this questioning, law enforcement officers
    pressured Bashirli to give evidence against Ali Keremli, leader of
    the Popular Front Party, suggesting that if he made a statement on
    television implicating Keremli, he would be released within 24 hours.
    Bashirli refused to make such a statement.

    Human Rights Watch has spoken with Bashirli's lawyer, who states that
    Bashirli maintains that the meeting in Georgia indeed took place, but
    he believed that his counterparts were members of civil society
    organizations and that the funds were intended to support
    democratization activities. On September 12, police arrested Said
    Nuri and charged him also with attempting to violently overthrow the
    government. The authorities accused him of organizing weapons and
    equipment for a coup in Azerbaijan while he was in Poland in late
    July and early August. Nuri was in Poland during this period for a
    conference sponsored by the European Institute for the Furtherance of
    Democracy, a Vienna-based organization that supports individuals and
    organizations working to promote democracy in Southern and Eastern
    Europe. On September 14, police arrested Ramin Tagiev on the same
    charge and accused him of "molding opinion about the falsity of
    elections among the population."

    Since these arrests, prosecutors have also charged the three men with
    illegal business activity.

    For days after Bashirli's arrest, state-controlled Azerbaijani
    television showed video footage of him drinking at a table with two
    men who the government alleges are Armenian agents, and another
    member of Yeni Fikir, Osman Alimuradov. The prosecuting authorities
    claimed that the men alleged to be Armenian agents filmed the meeting
    and then gave the video cassette to Alimuradov, threatening to use it
    against the Yeni Fikir members should they change their minds about
    cooperation.

    The government further alleges that it was Alimuradov who began to
    have second thoughts and decided to inform the Azerbaijani
    authorities about Bashirli and handed over the tape as evidence. It
    is not clear how the television station received copies of the video
    tape.

    Posters showing still photographs from this video, alongside graphic
    photographs allegedly depicting bodies of Azerbaijanis killed and
    mutilated by Armenian forces during the Nagorno-Karabakh war,
    implicating Bashirli in collusion with Armenian security agents, were
    displayed in public places widely throughout Baku. It is not clear
    who created or distributed these posters.

    "Azerbaijan's government is known for pressing charges against
    opposition figures for what appear to be political reasons, and the
    Yeni Fikir case fits this pattern," said Cartner. "We are deeply
    concerned that the three men will not get a fair trial."

    Azerbaijan has a history of arresting opposition figures during
    election periods and convicting them without guaranteeing basic fair
    trial standards. In October 2003, following fraudulent presidential
    elections and post-election violence, seven opposition leaders were
    convicted on charges of organizing or participating in mass
    disturbances and resisting or committing violence against a state
    representative. Human Rights Watch documented torture in the
    pre-trial detention of four of the seven defendants. Prosecution
    witnesses in this case also told the court that police and
    prosecutors had coerced and tortured them to make statements
    incriminating the opposition leaders. It is widely considered that
    the convicted opposition leaders are political prisoners.


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