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Photos posted online showing three detained opposition activists cleaning toilets and performing other manual work at a prison in Baku have sparked anger in Azerbaijan, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service of Europe writes.

The Article says that the photos were posted May 10 on Haqqin.az, a news website run by former jailed Azerbaijani journalist Eynulla Fatullayev.

The activists, two of whom have already been released, have called the photos a “provocation” and an act aimed at discrediting them.

The article reads that the three are Abulfaz Qurbanli, head of the opposition Azerbaijani Popular Front Party’s youth wing; Turgut Gambar, a member of NIDA, a youth opposition movement active on social media and son of opposition Musavat party leader Isa Gambar; and Ilkin Rustamzadeh, a member of the Free Youth organization.

It also notes that more than 30 civil society activists expressed their objections to the photos' publication, decrying the violation of the detained activists’ rights. They say that the photos were posted online with the intent of discrediting the activists.

Qurbanli said they were not aware they were being photographed.

According to the article Haqqin.az claims the photos were initially published on pro-government websites that had “mocked” the activists, but RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service could not find the photos posted on any other websites.

In this connection Vugar Mammadov, a spokesman for Azerbaijan’s ombudsman, has appealed to the Interior Ministry for an explanation. “These pictures could not have been taken by someone from outside,” Mammadov said.

The article says that the youth activists were detained on April 30 at a protest marking the fourth anniversary of a shooting spree at Azerbaijan’s State Oil Academy.

The author in the article notes that Amnesty International cut ties with Fatullayev after he “misled the organization about the source of funding for a project.”

Fatullayev has increasingly been siding with the Azerbaijani government. In a March 10 article, he accused the head of the U.S.-funded National Democratic Institute (NDI), Alex Grigorievs, of aiming to fund a “Facebook revolution” in Azerbaijan. His article went viral on pro-government media sites.