Former Azerbaijani MP sentenced to eight years in prison for extortion

Former Azerbaijani MP and businessman Nazim Baydamirli has been sentenced to eight years in prison by the Baku Grave Crimes Court on charges of extortion. 

Baydamirli was sentenced on 30 September, following over a year spent in pre-trial detention. 

His lawyer, Agil Layij, told Meydan TV that the charges against his client were unfounded. 

Likewise, Baydamirli’s wife, Farida Baydamirli, told OC Media that his arrest was absurd. She said that the family never expected such a thing would happen.

‘Nazim was never against the state, wherever he was, he defended his country. We can not understand how this happened, and for what? He is smart, understands economics, and can be useful to his homeland, but he is behind bars’, she said. 

According to her, the case began after her husband filed a lawsuit against Adalat Baghirov. Both Baydamirli and Baghirov were shareholders in Avto-Garant, a transportation company based in Russia.

‘Nazim had not received his share of the company for many years, so he filed a lawsuit against Baghirov, but somehow the case changed and he was accused of extortion’, Farida Baydamirli told OC Media.

According to his lawyer, Baydamirli went to meet with Baghirov at the request of the investigation, after which the investigators accused him of allegedly blackmailing Baghirov with intimate photos in exchange for money.

‘None of those who testified in court about that meeting were actually there, because it was a non-working day’, Layij told Meydan TV. 

‘They will not arrest a person with just the statement of a person, provocation. The powers given by the state cannot be abused’, he added.

Farida Baydamirli told OC Media that the court did not have any evidence that proved Baydamirli had blackmailed anyone.

Nazim Baydamirli’s family believes that he was arrested for participating in the June 2023 protests in the village of Soyudlu, where over one hundred residents gathered to protest pollution of the area by a mining company, assembling near an artificial lake reportedly used to dump acid waste from the mine. 

‘Nazim shared his feelings on social media after the incident in Soyudlu. He wrote what he thought’, Farida Baydamirli told OC Media.

‘Some pro-government media outlets prepared articles about him, claiming that he was the organiser of the incident in Soyudlu, but it was a lie. And Nazim filed a lawsuit against these media outlets’, she said.

She added that before the verdict was announced, her husband had claimed he was arrested by the order of a higher authority. He has also called himself a ‘prisoner of ecology’.

‘I think that my husband was a hindrance to someone and that these people slandered him. But I believe that Nazim will be released because he is innocent and has never been against his country’.

Baydamirli served in parliament between 2005–2010, and has been in pre-trial detention since July 2023.