Georgia rejects asylum request from family of detained Azerbaijani activist

Georgia has rejected the asylum request of Nurana Ashurova, the wife of a detained Azerbaijani activist, claiming that she would be safe in Azerbaijan despite there being a warrant for her arrest in her home country.

Ashurova has said that she received the rejection from the Migration Department on 29 November.

‘They informed me that my request for recognition as a political refugee was denied because no harm will come to me if I return to Azerbaijan’, Ashurova told OC Media.

Ashurova’s husband, Samir Ashurov, was detained and sentenced to 6.5 years in prison in April 2022 on charges of hooliganism using a weapon and inflicting grievous bodily harm — crimes he denies committing.

He and his family were deported from Germany in March 2022. They moved there after he was detained twice in 2018; once for ‘causing a public disturbance’ and another on drug charges.

Ashurova moved to Georgia with her two children after her husband’s latest detention, and has been staying in Tbilisi for more than a year before her asylum request was rejected.

According to a letter from the Georgian authorities seen by OC Media, they rejected her application on the grounds that there were no armed conflicts, human rights violations, or discrimination in Azerbaijan.

‘It can be concluded that according to your individual profile, in the event of your return, you will not be at risk of serious harm,’ read the rejection letter.

Ashurova says she received the rejection in both Azerbaijani and Georgian, but that the Azerbaijani version claimed that she was wanted in Azerbaijan on yet unclear charges.

‘This means if I return to Azerbaijan I probably will face arrest,’ she told OC Media, adding that she would appeal the decision.

Ashurova said that after her husband’s arrest in 2022, her neighbours urged her to move to Georgia, telling her that the police could ‘throw drugs’ into her yard in order to frame and subsequently detain her.

She says that she did not take her neighbours’ advice seriously until she began to feel like she was being followed by someone.

‘If I went into a store, someone would stand next to me and ask if they could buy me what I wanted, or someone would follow me to my house’, she told OC Media.

‘Eventually, I decided to change houses. It was another drama because the local police would force my landlords to throw me out of the house every time. After all, I was protesting my husband’s arrest.’