Civil rights activist Elshan Karimov was sentenced to six years in prison on 28 January over social media posts Azerbaijani courts claimed constituted a public call for forcefully overthrowing the government.
Karimov was arrested in April 2014 while visiting Azerbaijan from Russia, where he lived.
The independent media outlet Turan wrote that Karimov social media posts — which formed the basis of his criminal case — consisted solely of comments defending political prisoners in Azerbaijan.
His brother, Parviz Karimov, told Voice of America (VOA) about the circumstances of the arrest.
Parviz said his brother, who is a Russian citizen and has lived in Moscow since 1994, was detained in April in the village of Rustamli by men in black masks.
‘He came to mourn our father. Yesterday was the seventh day of my father's funeral. Five people in black masks arrived in two cars. They said that they were registering people arriving from abroad with the municipality and that they should go with them. They deceived us and took my brother. Later we learned that they first took my brother to the district prosecutor's office, and from there to Baku. They took him away’, Parviz Karimov told VOA.
Elshan Karimov wrote on Facebook using the nickname ‘Alishan Kerimov’. The first of his last two publicly available posts was an offering of thanks to those who had sent condolences about his father’s death, while the other, likely the post in question in the case, concerned the plight of political prisoners in Azerbaijan.
In the post, Karimov shared some collages of the photos of political prisoners, along with the comment that ‘what you see on this poster is only the “visible” tip of the iceberg of 289 political prisoners in Azerbaijan. In addition to the social and political activists we know and support, there are also many political prisoners we do not know about’.
‘On these holidays, let us not forget the sons and daughters of our people living as political prisoners. Let us remember their struggle and the sacrifices they made. Let us all embrace them, not forget them, and not allow them to be forgotten. Let us all demand their freedom!’, he concluded.
Seymur Hazi, deputy chair of the opposition Popular Front Party, told OC Media that Karimov was not a member of the party, but just a sympathiser. Hazi added that he was arrested on falsified charges.
Karimov’s case is only the latest instance of government crackdown on Azerbaijani civil society and opposition-minded individuals.
Human Rights Watch has reported on the human rights situation in Azerbaijan, and stated ‘starting in November 2023, the authorities targeted at least three independent media platforms, Abzas Media, Toplum TV, and Kanal 13, arresting their reporters and other staff on spurious smuggling charges […] In August 2024, the authorities pressed additional criminal charges against Abzas Media journalists and Farid Mehralizada, including tax evasion, forgery of documents, and money laundering’.
‘In March, shortly after the presidential election, police raided the office of Toplum TV, confiscating all of their equipment and sealing the office. They arrested five civic and political activists who shared office space and cooperated with Toplum […] In August 2024, a court sentenced a man involved in the 2023 environmental protests in Soyudlu on bogus drug possession charges. The man who had printed the posters held during the protests’, was arrested.
According to Turan, the number of political prisoners in Azerbaijan has reached 331 individuals.
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