Arrest of Azerbaijani Popular Front Party chair Ali Karimli triggers international criticism
Amnesty International has condemned Azerbaijan’s arrest of Ali Karimli, the chair of the opposition Azerbaijan Popular Front Party (PFP), saying that there ‘appear to be no limits to the government’s campaign to crush all political opposition and suppress all dissent in the country’.
Denis Krivosheev, the organisation’s Deputy Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said on Monday that Karimli’s arrest is ‘further evidence’ of the strengthening of the authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan.
Karimli and another member of his party, Mammad Ibrahim, were both detained on Saturday and had their homes raided by the State Security Service (DTX).
On Monday, the Sabail District Court accused both of them of committing actions aimed at the violent seizure of power and the violent change of the constitutional order of the state, subsequently remanding them to two months and 15 days in pre-trial detention.
‘The decision to arrest an opposition leader, hold him incommunicado, and press dubious charges of “attempted seizure of power” against him, sends a chilling warning to anyone who may have doubts as to how far the Azerbaijani government is prepared to go’, Kirosheev continued.
‘[The] authorities must release Ali Karimli unless they can demonstrate reasonable evidence of an alleged criminal offence. All they have demonstrated so far, by snatching and holding him incommunicado, and thus denying him his right to a fair trial, is their determination to take this wave of politically motivated arrests targeting opposition figures, academics, journalists and activists, even further.’
Franke Schwabe, a German member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), additionally said that Karimli’s arrest demonstrated that Baku was ‘moving further away from European values’.
‘At the same time, it is dealing a blow to efforts to restore its equal membership in the Council of Europe. Aliyev is closing the door to the Council of Europe’, Schwabe told RFE/RL.
Azerbaijan suspended its participation in PACE in January 2024, after the body voted not to ratify the Azerbaijani delegation’s credentials.
Inside Azerbaijan, MPs aligned with the government issued statements criticising the PFP.
For example, the pro-government media outlet Modern.az wrote that Ali Huseynli, chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Law, Policy, and State Building, said that the PFP’s registration ‘should be reviewed in accordance with the law’. He added that ‘such parties’ have either been liquidated or ceased operations long ago in many post-Soviet countries.
He added that after the adoption of a new law about the political parties in Azerbaijan, a new dialogue environment was created by the government. According to the law, which was adopted in November 2022, activities of the party without state registration are not permitted.
Huseynli additionally hinted at how the PFP is never invited to events or tours organised by the Presidential Administration — whose only opposition representation is the REAL party.
Aytan Farhadova
‘A party that did not even recognise the victory of the Azerbaijani state and people in the Second Karabakh War — was surprising’, Huseynli said.
Commenting on Huseynli’s remarks, Seymur Hazi, a member of the PFP, said that the apparent crackdown on the party wasn’t just an attack on Karimli, but an ‘attack on the process of restoring Azerbaijan’s independence, on its people’s movement, on its values and principles, on the very foundations of independence’.
‘If, by revising the PFP's registration, you hope to achieve the desire to create a Central Asian silence here, rest assured that the PFP is an expression of the energy that refuses this silence’, he continued.
Aytan Farhadova
