In Azerbaijan newspapers are handed to political prisoners with articles about them cut out
The Azerbaijani political prisoner Anar Mammadli and other political prisoners in the penal colony get the newspapers with 3-4 days’ delay, and the articles about the political prisoners are cut out, as Azerbaijani information agency Turan reports, the Committee of the protection of the rights of Anar Mammadli, the chairman of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre in Azerbaijan, said citing the family of the convicted activist.
According to the article, Mammadli’s family visited him on 11 March. He maintains good spirits. Despite serious problems with health, Mammadli goes on getting his treatment for his aggravated allergies. Earlier Mammadli complained of the poor conditions of his detention. However, he was transferred into another barrack after appealing to the colony administration.
PACE co-rapporteurs Pedro Agramunt and Tadeusz Iwinski visited him last week, and earlier Stavros Lambiridis, the EU special representative for human rights and Malena Mard, the head of EU delegation to Baku, had gone to see him. Problems of the political prisoners, the conditions of their cells, their detention condition, and upcoming parliamentary elections in autumn were discussed during the visits, Turan reports.
The information agency reminds that Mammadli was arrested on 16 December, 2013 and subsequently sentenced to 5.5 years in prison on charges of committing economical crimes. Human rights organization Amnesty International considers Mammadli a “prisoner of conscience.” He is a Václav Havel Award for Human Rights winner.
The Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre carried out a monitoring of the presidential elections on 9 November, 2013 as an NGO and pointed out numerous violations of law. A number of human rights defenders declared that it was the reason why Anar Mammadli was arrested.
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