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The United States is deeply troubled by recent developments affecting civil society in Azerbaijan, including the arrest of Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies (EMDS) Chairman Anar Mammadli, stated the U.S. representative in the OSCE Daniel Baer. The statement can be found on the official site of the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan.

He noted that the U.S. is interested whether Mr. Mammadli’s detention is related to his organization’s election monitoring and reporting activities. “The United States has raised this case with senior members of the Government of Azerbaijan and will continue to do so,” Baer said.

“We urge that Mr. Mammadli be released immediately while the legal process continues,” he stressed and added that the U.S. has urged the Government of Azerbaijan to observe due process of the law and ensure transparency and fairness in the judicial process.

The U.S. representative to OSCE urged the President Aliyev to return the draft NGO legislation to parliament and to bring it in line with international standards and OSCE commitments.

On 9 of October Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies (EMDC) did a monitoring of Azerbaijani presidential elections and recorded numerous violations of law. In late October, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s Office opened a criminal case and started investigations on EMDC. In regard to this an alliance organization “European Platform for Democratic Elections” (EPDE) issued a statement which says that EPDE protests against the arbitrary and illegal prosecutions on EMDC head Anar Mamadli. The alliance regrets for the measures the Azerbaijani government deploys against “independent, honest position of this organization in assessing the presidential elections in the country.”

On 9 October presidential elections took place in Azerbaijan in which the incumbent president Ilham Aliyev won the elections with almost 85% of the vote, thereby taking the post for the third time. The head of National Council of Democratic Forces Jamil Hasanli was second after Aliyev with 5.5% of vote. The opposition declared that it wouldn’t accept the election results because the elections were totally violated by ballot-box staffing, “carousel” etc. OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, U.S Department of State, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Britain and European Parliament called the elections undemocratic and inconsistent with OSCE standards.