Azerbaijan establishes temporary checkpoints near Russian border

Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry has announced the establishment of checkpoints near the border with Russia as part of a ‘temporary preventative operation to identify and neutralise members of transnational organised crime and terrorist groups’.

On 3 February, the ministry stated that the checkpoints would also be used to confiscate weaponry, ammunition, explosives, narcotics, and financial resources.

They later clarified that the operation would last until 10 February.

Earlier that day, Azerbaijan’s State Security Service (SSS) and the Interior Ministry released information regarding an operation in the village Jibir in the Gusar district, near the Russian border, which led to the deaths of eight people, with six more detained, seemingly implying the rationale behind the temporary checkpoints.

According to the joint statement, underground shelters were found near the villages of Hil, Jibir, and Yasab, which were allegedly created by people linked to the Forest Brothers, also known as Derbent Jamaat, a militant group which participated in the Chechen wars in the 2000s.

‘During the inspection of the discovered shelters, peat intended for the manufacture of explosive devices, acetone, detonators, remote-controlled explosive mechanisms, reinforcement and lead parts used as shrapnel, two Kalashnikov assault rifles, three guns, cartridges, and machine gun bullets were seized, as well as essential items, as well as a flag, which is the symbol of an illegal armed formation recognised as [belonging to] a terrorist organisation, were identified and seized’, the statement read.

According to the Interior Ministry and the SSS, during an operation to locate one of the group members, the suspect threw two RGO-78 hand grenades, which resulted in one of the special forces officers being wounded.

Four more members of the group hiding in the area were allegedly killed as a result of explosive devices detonating while they resisted the authorities.

As a result of the operation, eight suspected militants were killed and another six were arrested on various weapons-related charges.

The joint statement by the Interior Ministry and the SSS, however, did not reveal that the operation had in fact been carried out earlier in 2024.

In the footage shared by the Interior Ministry and the SSS, the task force is shown wearing summer clothing and operating in a place surrounded by green trees.

‘This is old news, the incident happened several months ago in September’, the chair of the Jibir village municipality, Ilham Valadov, told OC Media.

Valadov added the people killed in the operation were not residents of the village, noting that in Jibir, ‘there are no radical extremists’.

OC Media reached out to the Interior Ministry for clarification, but did not receive a response.

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Who are the Azerbaijani Forest Brothers?

The people killed and detained in the Gusar district were not the first group Azerbaijani authorities have accused of being linked to the North Caucasian Forest Brothers.

In 2009, 26 people alleged to be a part of the Forest Brothers were sentenced on charges of blowing up the Abu Bakir Mosque in Baku the year prior. As a result of the attack, two people were killed and nine injured.

According to Elman Osmanov, who defended 26 people involved in the Abu Bakir case, torture was used against his clients.

‘They showed their backs and there were easily visible marks of big bruises. These marks were visible after six months, too. They were beaten with the rebars. I remembered one of them with the surname Bashirov — from the beginning, he refused all charges, and his guilt couldn’t be proven in court. However, he was sentenced to 15 years of prison’, Osmanov told OC Media.

‘In this case, there were suspicious things that were not opened, one of them was that the Abu Bakir Mosque was located in the centre of Baku, and in several of the streets, even near the mosque, there were surveillance cameras, but on that day, when someone threw a grenade, all of them were not working’, Osmanov added.

During the trial, the defendants stated that they confessed due to the torture inflicted against them while in police custody. However, the judges did not consider these statements as relevant, and decided that the testimony taken at the police station was more critical to the case.

The 26 defendants were sentenced to between 5–15 years in prison.

Despite repeated claims by the Azerbaijani government that fighting terrorism is one of its main priorities, there have been relatively few terrorist attacks over the past few decades, and the government has been accused of demonising the perceived influence of radical Islam as a means of cracking down on one of the few outlets for public expression.

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