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The law enforcement agencies of Azerbaijan keep silent about high officials’ arrests, meanwhile leaking information to the press about yet another detention of this or that official, Turan agency writes.

Pro-government media reported that the Anti-Corruption Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office had arrested Gambar Beybalayev, the director of Azeripocht, a department of Communications Ministry. The reason of the arrest and the charges against him are not disclosed. Turan highlights that this was not the first report about a state official’s arrest over the past week; however no one has denied the information.

“It is rather difficult to understand the authorities’ logic. Actually, such publications fundamentally break the law on media and journalism ethics, which the authorities constantly trumpet blaming the media for running unverified information and rumours. Still now, they keep silent over the dozens of reports about mass arrests and dismissals of high-ranking state officials. The ‘secret arrests’ are most probably a new stile, which will be used in the near future,” Turan writes.

Haqqin.az cites Modern.az reporting that a lycée in Nakhijevan, which used to carry the name of the father of the former minister Eldar Mahmudov, academician Ahmad Mahmudov, was renamed becoming lycée of physics and mathematics.

According to Minval.az, a monument was erected in Nakhijevan in Ahmad Mahmudov’s honour, earlier demolished by the local authorities. Moreover, Mubariz Mansimov, the owner of the Palmali Group of Companies, named a dry cargo motor ship after Mahmudov. Information about the name’s removal from the ship after Eldar Mahmudov’s dismissal was circulated in social networks.

Analysing the possible candidates for Azerbaijan Security Minister’s post, Minval.az writes that the November 2 Presidential order to appoint the acting minister Lieutenant General Madat Guliyev as a chairman of the State Commission on Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing People, implies that soon he will become the new Minister of the office. The website backs this assumption with the regulations of the Commission, according to which only the Security Minister can chair it. Besides, Guliyev enjoys a serious support by the Presidential Administration and the Justice Minister Fikrat Mammadov.

Minval.az received a letter from the executive secretary of the State Committee for work with religious organisations of Azerbaijan, Irshad Huseynov. Huseynov wrote about witnessing excavations in his native village Ilanli, Gobustan district, in September of the current year. An excavator worked in the cemetery razing his ancestors’ tombstones to the ground, while cars with state number plates were standing nearby. Afgan Mammadov, the chief of Gobustan district department of the Security Ministry, turned out to be controlling the process. He said they were looking for gold in the graves on Minister Eldar Mahmudov’s order. He went there on the following day to find 73 graves grazed to the ground and tombstones stolen.

Minval.az further reports that Matlab Mustafayev, brother of Security Ministry colonel Malik Mustafayev, who committed suicide on 3 November 2014, sent a shocking video appeal to the newspaper Bizim Yol, where he told about the reason of his 55-year-old brother’s suicide.

“My brother Malik Mustafayev came to me on 6 September 2016 and told me with a trembling voice that Minister Eldar Mahmudov wanted to meet me for a reason he was not aware of,” Matlab Mustafayev says in the video appeal to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. The following day, they both went to the Security Ministry, where they met Elchin Guliyev, the chief of Anti-terrorism centre, and his deputy colonel Ilgar Aliyev, who is currently arrested. They demanded from Matlab to slander on some people President Ilham Aliyev had recently appointed. He refused to do that, however.

Sixteen soldiers of Special Forces of the Anti-terrorism centre of the Security Ministry broke into his house on 11 September and took Matlab to jail. In the morning, the investigators started to interrogate him, exerting pressure and threats. On 17 October 2014, a group of masked people led by Elshan Martuzov broke into their younger sister Irada’s house at 10 at night. The group sent the family out of the house trying to hide drugs inside in order to “find” them later. However, they left without being able to do that for some reason. After learning about the incident, Malik Mustafayev went to the Security Ministry to see Elchin Guliyev on 1 November. Matlab does not know what they talked about, but on the following day, he was found hanged in the yard of his house.

“He (Elchin Guliyev – ed.), his chief Eldar Mahmudov, as well as Mehman Shikhaliyev, Tahsin Agayev, Elshan Martuzov, Kamil Aliyev, Ilgar Aliyev and Mahmud Gasimov, all directly connected with the case, are guilty of my brother’s death. We ask to punish all those responsible for my brother’s death, who served 31 years in the Security Ministry. If they treated like this with us and our family, it is clear how they would treat with ordinary citizens,” Matlab Mustafayev says in the video.

On 17 October 2015, President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, signed a decree to dismiss the Minister of National Security, Eldar Mahmudov Ahmad oglu, from his post. Reportedly, an investigation revealed that a group of high-ranking officials had been engaged in criminal actions against entrepreneurs for a long period and gained millions. The activities of the Azerbaijani business elite and well-known representatives of medium-sized business were surveilled with audio spying equipment on Minister Eldar Makhmudov’s order. The MNS generals took an active part in the process. Later, discrediting material was specially filed against those businesspersons, and consequently, the snatch squad of the MNS conducted illegal arrests of businesspeople on the leadership’s order.