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Arrest of Anar Mammadli shows disregard of Azerbaijan authorities for independent election monitoring and civil liberties, reads the statement of the Civil Society Forum, which can be found on their official site.

“Anar Mammadli is a highly respected civil rights activist, and the reports produced by his election monitoring organization are considered to be highly credible both in Azerbaijan and abroad,” the organization notes.

According to the authors of the statements the arrest of the head of the Center is another example of persecution of human rights by the Azerbaijani authorities.

“We urge the authorities to immediately free Anar Mammadli, and to drop all charges against him. The authorities must understand that every additional political prisoner in Azerbaijan undermines the country’s image abroad and its position in the Council of Europe and in the Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe as well as its relations with the European Union,” the statement says.

“We urge the European Commission, the EU delegation in Baku, and the European Parliament to condemn his arrest in the strongest terms, and to support the Civil Society Forum in pressing the Azerbaijan authorities for his immediate release,” the authors of the document conclude.

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.