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The Council of Europe’s leaders and members of its Parliamentary Assembly should urge Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to end his country’s growing persecution of government critics and independent groups, reads the statement of the international organization Human Rights Watch.

According to Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch it is sheer irony that Azerbaijan presides over a body whose standards it so flagrantly violates.

“The Council of Europe’s leadership should not miss this opportunity to urge Aliyev to free people who are behind bars for nothing more than speaking their minds and to allow independent groups to operate,” he noted.

The statement reads that in the past two years, Azerbaijani authorities have brought or threatened unfounded criminal charges against at least 40 political activists, journalists, bloggers, and human rights defenders, most of whom are behind bars. In its September 2013 report “Tightening the Screws: Azerbaijan’s Crackdown on Civil Society and Dissent,” and in dozens of follow-up interviews, Human Rights Watch documented the authorities’ use of a range of criminal charges, including drug and weapons possession, incitement to violence, hooliganism, tax evasion, and even treason to silence its critics.

According to Williamson president Aliyev is likely to claim in Strasbourg that no one in Azerbaijan is in prison on politically motivated charges. “He should be asked to explain why some of the country’s top political activists are behind bars, or why police arrest Facebook activists on drug charges but then question them exclusively about their activism,” he said.

It’s high time for Azerbaijan to show true leadership by fulfilling the obligations it undertook 13 years ago when it joined the Council of Europe. Releasing Mammadov and Mammadli, together with dozens of other imprisoned activists, is the obvious place to start, the HRW representative believes.

The organization notes that since the report titled “Tightening the Screws: Azerbaijan’s Crackdown on Civil Society and Dissent,” was published, 16 people whose cases the report documented and who were awaiting trial have been convicted and sentenced to prison; 4 have been released; and 13 more have been arrested and convicted.

The Azerbaijani Institute for Peace and Democracy (IPD) published a list of political prisoners present in the country. Thus, as of May 21, 2014 in Azerbaijan, there were 130 victims of political repression: 41 prisoners of conscience and 89 political prisoners.