Your trusted source

“REAL” movement is going to put forward Ilgar Mamedov’s candidacy for president. Ilgar Mamedov was arrested on Monday in Azerbaijan. The authorities of Azerbaijan accuse him of organizing a rebellion in Ismailli region, the Azerbaijani paper “Zerkalo” reports.

“That is to say, we already have a potential presidential candidate who is a political prisoner,” the article reads.

The article reminds that Nasimi District Court of Baku implemented preventive punishment against Tofig Yagublu, Deputy Chairman of oppositional “Musavat” party, and Ilgar Mamedov, the chairman of the civil movement “REAL” Ilgar Mamedov, putting them under arrest for 2 months. They are accused of organizing riots in the district and resisting the police. If it is proved that they are guilty they will face a sentence of 7 years. Yagublu and Mamedov deny the charges against them. According to the lawyers, the decision of the arrest will be appealed in the Court of Appeal.

Mamedov as a director of the Baku School of Political Studies of the Council of Europe is in fact, the staff member of this international organization. This fact inevitably will lead Mamedov’s case into huge international resonance. Never before were instituted criminal proceedings against the representatives of influential international organization in Azerbaijan.

Author of the article Rauf Mirkadirov notes that he personally knows Ilgar Mamedov for about 20 years. With his assistance and at the invitation of the Council of Europe I even gave a lecture to the graduates of the School of Political Studies of the Council of Europe at the final session, in Strasbourg. To think that Mamedov called on for rioting, smashing hotel which belongs to the family of the minister is a pure fiction,” the article reads.

“Today, we are talking about the arrest of a political and social activist who was “dear” to the Council of Europe. And here is the result of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe which decided “not to irritate Baku” about the problem concerning the political prisoners. They began to “produce” new ones, at once, “on the spot” just as soon as they got the “approval” of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,” the article says.

The author notes that now he agrees with the statements concerning the “decline of Europe”, as far as PACE dared not to “annoy” Azerbaijani authorities by the request of the Azerbaijani human rights activist Eynulla Fatullayev and didn’t accept Christoph Strässer’s report on political prisoners in Azerbaijan.

“I think that PACE MPs who voted against the resolution of Christoph Strässer are to carry at least moral and political responsibility for the new arrests that occur today, including Ilgar Mamedov’s who was popularizing values of the Council of Europe in Azerbaijan and who appeared behind the bars. By the way, a question arises: can we at once declare Ilgar Mamedov as political prisoner and a “prisoner of conscience”, as we did once with Fatullayev, or have we to wait for the judicial process? In the meantime, let him stay behind the bars, at least for several months, before the trial?” Zerkalo writes.

On January 23 PACE didn’t admit the report didn’t adopt the report of the German MP Christoph Strässer on “The follow-up to the issue of political prisoners in Azerbaijan.” There were names of 85 political prisoners in the report who were imprisoned in Azerbaijan, a third of them were already released.

Unrests in Ismailli district began at the evening of January 23, after an accident in which the nephew of the head of Nizami Alekperov and son of the Minister of Labor Fizuli Alekperov - Vugar Alekperov - were involved. As a result a revolt arose; the participants set to fire commercial entities belonging to officials. Special Forces and internal troops entered the district. They used rubber bullets and tear gas against the rebels. There were dozens of arrested and injured in the result of clashes.