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Azerbaijan’s Narimanov District Court has sentenced human rights lawyer Emin Aslan to 30 days admin­is­tra­tive detention for ‘dis­obey­ing police’. The pretext for police to approach and detain Aslan remain unknown.

Aslan has for years worked to protect human rights in Azer­bai­jan, lit­i­gat­ing a number of cases of alleged human rights abuses of Azer­bai­jani citizens at the European Court of Human Rights, and working for two Tbilisi-based rights groups.

According to a Facebook post by Azer­bai­jani jour­nal­ist Arzu Gey­bul­laye­va, a friend of Aslan’s, ‘he was pre­vi­ous­ly accused of tax evasion at the time of his work with some of the NGOs in Azer­bai­jan, [but] he has paid all his dues and has no history of criminal record’.

Meydan TV reported that his lawyer Elchin Sadigov was not admitted to the court hearing. Following his apparent dis­ap­pear­ance on Monday, the Stockholm based Civil Rights Defenders called on the Azer­bai­jani gov­ern­ment to imme­di­ate­ly release him, while South Caucasus Director of Human Rights Watch Giorgi Gogia crit­i­cised Baku for holding him incom­mu­ni­ca­do.

According to the head of the Election Mon­i­tor­ing and Democracy Studies Center (EMDS), Anar Mammadli, Aslan was detained on 4 June by plain-clothed police officers. Azer­bai­jani inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Khadija Ismay­ilo­va claimed that after inter­na­tion­al attention, ‘police found no better solution than to take him to the court for ‘resis­tance to police’ charges’.

Local human rights advocates iden­ti­fied the owner of the car by which Aslan was taken away as that of Mehman Teymurov, a member of the police’s Anti-Organised Crime Unit and an ‘operative in a number of political cases’.

Aslan’s attorney Elchin Sadigov as well as friends and family were not informed of his where­abouts and he was denied access to his lawyer for more than twelve hours, until the next day when the Depart­ment for Combating Organised Crime confirmed his detention.

Human rights defender

Aslan pre­vi­ous­ly worked for the South Caucasus Programme of the Tbilisi-based Eastern European Centre for Mul­ti­par­ty Democracy (EECMD) from 2014–2016. Speaking to OC Media, Human Rights House Tbilisi confirmed that after 2016 Aslan also worked in their organ­i­sa­tion as a con­sul­tant, until departing for US for studies. He recently graduated from Syracuse Uni­ver­si­ty College of Law, and returned to Baku only around a week ago.

In a letter of support, Levan Tsut­skiridze head of the EECMD described Aslan’s detention as ‘horrible’. ‘What future is there if we, instead of encour­ag­ing and pro­tect­ing the best educated and most motivated people of our nations, silence them and throw them in prison cells hoping that they never ever speak again, that they never ever dream again of a better future…? Unfor­tu­nate that the gov­ern­ment marks its 100th anniver­sary by arresting its open minded young leaders’.

Emin left his native country for Georgia to escape a wave of pros­e­cu­tions of activists and people working with inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions in Azer­bai­jan.

Inter­na­tion­al rights groups like Human Rights Watch and Freedom House have condemned Azerbaijan’s human rights record.

In it’s 2018 report, Human Rights Watch said that during a con­tin­u­ing crackdown on inde­pen­dent voices, Azer­bai­jani author­i­ties convicted at least 25 jour­nal­ists and political activists last tear, while dozens more were detained or are under criminal inves­ti­ga­tion, face harass­ment and travel bans, or have fled.

Freedom House’s Nation in Transit 2018 report named Azer­bai­jan as one of ‘Eurasia’s entrenched autoc­ra­cies — [where] per­son­alised regimes keep a tight grip on power, sup­press­ing political com­pe­ti­tion and targeting inde­pen­dent activists and jour­nal­ists who dare to speak out’.

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