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The Azerbaijani Popular Front Party (APFP) has organized an online campaign to support the political prisoner Leyla Yunus, well-known Azerbaijani human rights defender, Azerbaijani newspaper Azadlig reports noting that the party has published photos with hashtags on a number of Facebook pages calling to raise the issue before the Azerbaijani authorities to release Yunus, as well as other political prisoners.

According the article, APFP has stressed in its statement that it is already impossible to hear and read about the aggravation of the illness, deterioration of the health and threats to the life of the Azerbaijani human rights defender “who is the captive of the authorities of the country.”

“An elderly woman, struggling decidedly for our rights and arrested precisely as a result of that struggle, is under a permanent threat of death in the conditions of her detention in jail. We have decided to hold a protest for her as part of our campaign to support the political prisoners in Azerbaijan,” the statement reads.

According to the newspaper, the statement also highlights that the Azerbaijani society must be actively engaged in spreading photos and articles about Leyla Yunus in social networks, set the Azerbaijani human rights defender’s photo as their profile picture in Facebook, and frequently update statuses demanding the human rights defender’s release with the hashtags #FreeLeyla and #Leylaniazadet.

The newspaper writes that APFP leaders said that it is also necessary to bring Leyla’s husband conflictologist Arif Yunus’s health problems into spotlight for he had also been arrested on bogus charges.

The Nasimi District Court has recently extended the arrest of Azerbaijani human rights activist Leyla Yunus for five months, despite the fact that earlier the German physician Kristan Witt had confirmed that she had a serious illness. According Kristan Witt, a blood test showed that the Azerbaijani human rights activist really was in process of decomposition of a liver. She continues to lose weight: within 6 months her weight has reduced from 62 kg to 46 kg, all in all she has lost 16 kg. According to the doctor, all this clearly confirms the irreversible processes in her body.

Human rights activist Leyla Yunus was arrested on 30 July in her house yard. She was charged with state treason, tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurship, falsification of documents and large-scale fraud. Charges of high treason and large-scale fraud were also brought against her husband Arif Yunusov. The Nasimi District Court extended his arrest till 5 August, 2015.

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