A court in Azerbaijan has ordered a lengthy pre-trial detention for a 20-year-old Belarusian citizen of Iranian descent who is accused of spray painting graffiti in the capital.
According to the pro-government Azerbaijani news site Qafqazinfo, Ardeshir Seifpour Saad Abadi was among four people who painted different notes on the walls of Nizami Cinema Centre on 2 April. The four are accused of damaging a historical building.
News of Seifpour’s arrest has been accompanied by intensive coverage in Azerbaijani pro-government media, with officials and pro-government civil society figures lining up to condemn his alleged crime.
The names of Seifpour’s three alleged teenage accomplices have not been revealed, however, pro-government media has published the names of the schools they supposedly attended as well as the identities and places of work of their parents.
Civil rights activist Aykhan Zayedzadeh stated on social media that the authorities interrogated 20 teenagers over two days as part of their investigation.
Pro-government media claimed that Seifpour came to Azerbaijan to study in 2024. However, according to his LinkedIn account, he was enrolled at Baku’s lyceum Number 160 from 2013-2024 and subsequently became a student at the ADA University.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a friend of Seifpour’s insisted he was innocent and had no connection with the other detainees, stating he was at home when the incident took place.
‘The tags left on the walls belong to the nationalist, radicals, despite that, the police completely ignored these links, focusing on Ardeshir due to his artistic background and Iranian heritage’, they told OC Media. The friend said Seifpour had been mistreated while in detention.
He also said that images supposedly of Seifpour distributed by a number of pro-government news sites were of a different person. Images from Seifpour’s Linkedin profile appear to show a different person to the man identified by pro-government media.
‘A matter of grave concern’
A number of officials and other pro-government figures have commented on the incident.
A day after it took place, Elnara Akimova, an MP for Sumgait, insisted that the graffiti was ‘not “just a scribble”, as some are trying to portray, but a clear act of vandalism’.
‘This is disrespectful to the city’s aesthetic appearance, its historical and cultural value’, she added.
Sumgait, which Akimova represents, has been devastated by the floods in recent days, a situation Akimova has yet to publicly comment on.
Fatma Yildirim, another MP, expressed a similar opinion, stating that ‘the graffiti incident on the wall of the Nizami Cinema Centre in central Baku is a matter of grave concern, and it is impossible to remain indifferent to it’.
Yildirim said ‘this matter must be seriously investigated by the relevant authorities, and specific measures must be taken to prevent similar incidents’.
However, the government response to the case has been criticised in some quarters.
Ruslan Aliyev, an Azerbaijani human rights activist, said the actions being taken in the case were disproportionate to the crime.
‘According to law, four months pretrial detention applies to grave crimes’, Aliyev told Toplum TV.
Rasul Hasan, an artist from Baku, suggested it was ironic that the government had taken such a tough line on the graffiti, given that several years ago historic details of the Nizami Cinema Centre were damaged when a restaurant was built on the building’s balcony.
‘Those who remained silent [then] lashed out at the children who defaced the building. What hypocrites these people are!’, he said. He added that these ‘lions’ had also turned a blind eye to the demolition of buildings in Baku’s historic centre.
