Mother of convicted activist claims that police has planted drugs on her son
Nurjahan Abolova, mother of the Facebook activist, Abdul Abilov, who was sentenced to 5.5 years imprisonment for possession of drugs, said in an interview with Turan, that she has seen how the police planted drugs on him.
“They bought my son home in handcuffs. One of the officers put a cellophane bundle into my son’s jacket, I caught the policeman's hand, but they pushed me off, and shoved the bundle into the pocket of his jacket. I was threatened not to make a noise, otherwise they would plant five kilo of it," said Abilov’s mother.
According Abilova her son opposes injustice which has become the reason of his arrest.
She noted that after the arrest of Abdul Abilov, the family is in hard situation. "My son was the only breadwinner. After his arrest I sent his wife to her parent’s home, and I myself left for another region, I lived at my brother’s for some time. Now I have returned to Baku. How can I live without my son and daughter-in-law? How can I live on human handouts?" wonders the mother.
Abilova noted that she had filed complaints, but they were not considered.
Turan notes that Abdul Abilov was arrested on November 22, 2013 for opening a page on Facebook called "Stop sycophants", where the authorities were criticized. On May 27 in 2014 Baku’s Court on Grave Crimes has sentenced Abdul Abilov to five and a half years in prison.
Yesterday the OSCE Representative on Freedom of Media Dunja Mijatović issued a statement in which she expressed concern about the court verdict against two bloggers in Azerbaijan Omar Mammadov and Abdul Abilov.
Note also that the Azerbaijani Institute for Peace and Democracy (IPD) published a list of political prisoners in the country. Thus, as of May 21, 2014 there are 130 victims of political repressions in Azerbaijan: 41 prisoners of conscience and 89 political prisoners.