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Along with official observers from the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and other international bodies, members of the group as well as members of Independent American Center of Political Monitoring were in Azerbaijan this week to observe the October 9 presidential election, the radio Liberty says.

“But ask any Azerbaijan-watcher or journalist outside of the pro-government media who they are and nobody seems to know for sure,” the author writes.

As noted in the material, some have never heard of the organization. Others suspect that they're paid by Baku or government proxies to give a favorable assessment of the election's conduct.

“Such an assessment -- particularly coming from Western observers -- would be a useful counterargument to allegations of massive fraud by the country’s political opposition,” the author notes.

According to the article, the Independent American Center of Political Monitoring is based in the small city of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. It says the group is a nonprofit founded in 2005 to monitor elections in the former Soviet Union.

Most of its members are described simply as "experts," with an accompanying list of elections they say they've monitored, but little additional detail.

“The organization describes itself in grammatically incorrect English as "a young and influential organization that has earned the trust and respect of political many scientists and electorate of North America and the rest of the world," the material says.

As the author notes that links to previous election-monitoring reports from Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and other former Soviet republics lead to empty pages. The website also offers no information about its funding.

The author says that in the hours after polls closed in Azerbaijan, the pro-government APA news agency apparently referenced the group, reporting that "the U.S. group of observers" found "free activity" at polling stations.

On the eve of the October 9 vote, the American Center's umbrella organization, the International Expert Center for Electoral Systems (ICES), held a press conference in Baku.

There, RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service asked Anna Curdova, a former member of the Czech parliament and an ICES election observer, for details on the organization's funding. She identified an NGO that she said was based in Ukraine.

Election observer Michael Hohendahl, a lawyer from Germany, also told RFE/RL that his work was funded by the NGO. However, Hohendahl was previously quoted by Interfax-Ukraine as praising the conduct of Ukraine's 2012 parliamentary elections, a contest that Western observers described as highly flawed.