Detained economist Gubad Ibadoghlu’s family say that doctors in Azerbaijan have refused to treat his aortic aneurysm, despite him needing an emergency surgery.

Ibadoghlu, who is under house arrest, has been unable to leave the country to receive treatment abroad. His family also claim that ‘many’ doctors have refused to treat him or to provide him with medication in Azerbaijan.

His daughter, Zhala Bayramova, told OC Media that Ibadoghlu suffers from a serious aortic aneurysm, and has experienced heart pain and shortness of breath. She said that his tests showed that his condition was getting worse, and warned that his condition ‘poses an imminent danger to his life and requires immediate evaluation by a cardiac surgeon’.

She added that her father’s medicine has to be delivered to Azerbaijan from the UK every month.

[Read more: Azerbaijani opposition party chair detained for ‘collusion with a terrorist organisation’]

Ibadoghlu was arrested on 23 July 2023 as part of what the authorities said was an investigation into supporters of exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, whom Turkey blames for an attempted coup in 2016. He was released into house arrest in April.

Prior to his arrest, Ibadoghlu lived and worked in London, where he was a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics. He was visiting his mother, who was experiencing health issues, in Azerbaijan before he was arrested.

‘After the murder of Vidadi Isgandarli, my father fears for us’

Bayramova told OC Media that her father’s condition will continue to worsen so long as he does not receive treatment or if he remains in a stressful environment.

‘There are civil police outside our house, and he needs to go to the police station twice a week to sign a document’, she said. ‘Despite that, the police gave him a basic phone with which he should contact the police when he is outside the house. He should inform the police when he tries to buy something from the market, and he is concerned about us too’.

Bayramova told OC Media that after the murder of the exiled government critic Vidadi Isgandarli  in France, her father feared for his family members, because they lived separately from each other in different countries.

[Read more: Exiled Azerbaijani activist Vidadi Isgandarli dies after stabbing in France]

‘We attend many conferences where Azerbaijanis also join, and my mother also has problems with her health. She lives with me and we try to hide my mother’s health condition from him in order not to worry him a lot, but dealing with the situation is a struggle’.

‘When I talk to him, he mentions every time that he misses his students and his classrooms, and that he is afraid that he might lose his life and not be able to see us. And we want to save him and we are looking for ways to do that’, she added.

Bayramova said that she would appeal to President Ilham Aliyev for Ibadoghlu’s release as a last resort.

‘We have not addressed Ilham Aliyev until today, but we have demanded that the Azerbaijani government release my father because he is innocent. However, if I find out that this is the last way to save my father and that Ilham Aliyev has such a need [to assuage his ego], I can address him.’ 

On Tuesday, the EU Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit, called on Azerbaijan to lift Ibadoghlu’s travel ban to allow him to receive treatment abroad.

‘The authorities must ensure due process, dignified treatment of all detainees, and access to proper health care, in accordance with international standards’, Schmit said.

He also noted that COP29, which Baku will host in November, was an ‘opportunity’ for the Azerbaijani authorities to ‘reverse the worrying trend of the past years of an increasingly shrinking space for civil society, intensifying repression of independent media and dissenting voices, and the growing number of arbitrary arrests.’

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aykhan Hajizada dismissed Schmit’s remarks as ‘unacceptable, unfounded, biassed, and anti-Azerbaijani’.