Prison conditions in Azerbaijan appear to deteriorate in recent weeks

Media reports regarding the harsh conditions in Azerbaijani pretrial detention centres have intensified following the publication of letters from journalists and activists in prison. Separately, pro-government media has reported that a prisoner died after a roof collapsed in a prison in Baku.

On 1 June, the Justice Ministry reported that at 13:10, the roof of the residential building for prisoners of colony N12 collapsed.

APA, a pro-government media outlet, wrote that as a result, Mustafayev Movlam Mukhtar oghlu, sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years and six months for premeditated murder, died from the bodily injuries he received on 2 June.

Other prisoners and prison employees were not harmed.

Four days have passed since the accident, and the reason for the collapse and the current situation have not been revealed yet.

An acquaintance of a prisoner serving their time in colony N12 has told OC Media on condition of anonymity that the Justice Ministry’s Penitentiary Service and the Ministry of Emergency Situations checked the area following the incident.

‘There are several colonies located in this territory, and my acquaintance was in another colony building. In this building, the third floor collapsed onto the second. And my acquaintance told me that if this had happened at night, around 150 prisoners would not have survived. As the building collapsed during the day, the prisoners were in the yard’, they told OC Media.

‘And the Ministry of Emergency Situations experts stated that a second building is also in an emergency situation. The colony prisoners were settled in different districts of Azerbaijan, in Shaki and Lankaran’, they continued.

Cockroaches, rats, and contaminated food and water

On Tuesday, Ali Zeynal, an employee of the local Institute of Democratic Initiatives, who was detained as part of the case against Toplum TV, wrote a letter addressing Justice Minister Farid Ahmadov. Zeynal said that he wanted to discuss poor conditions in Azerbaijan’s prisons with the head of the Baku pretrial detention centre, Elnur Ismayilov, ‘but no one was interested’.

‘So, before the arrival of this respectable inspection from the ministry representatives, preparations began in cell 12 of building II a month or two before. Repairs were made, even new cabinets were installed, flower pots were placed, paintings, and landscapes depicting the beauty of mountains, rivers, and nature were hung on the walls. The places and cells that the inspection would “inspect” were known in advance (even months in advance)!’, Zeynal wrote.

‘However, if cell 19, opposite cell 12, had also been a part of the visit, even for one or two minutes, I would have gladly shown our personal belongings, clothes, food, and drinks contaminated with sewage. I would even have shown the cockroaches one by one, if it had not been disgusting’.

In his letter, Zeynal complained about the poor sanitary conditions, emphasising that cockroaches and rats ‘crawled out from under the floor and through the sewer pipes’.

Only a day after his letter was published, Toplum TV reported that Zeynal was being threatened for publicising the situation in the Baku pretrial detention centre where he is being held.

According to the article, Zeynal told his relatives about the threats in a telephone conversation on 5 June. He said that the employees of the pretrial detention centre deprived him of calling anyone, citing his open letter to the Justice Minister and his actions publicising the situation in the detention centre.

Toplum TV wrote that if Zeynal ‘continues to spread information about the situation in the pretrial detention centre, “it will get worse for him” ’.

But Zeynal’s letter was not the only one to come out of a detention centre and to shed light on living conditions there.

Afiyaddin Mammadov, an imprisoned labour union activist, wrote from colony N2 about ‘unbearable, unsanitary’ conditions.

Toplum TV reported that Mammadov wrote about how ‘mice roam freely around the kitchen, chew holes in food boxes, and eat the food. Mice also roam the sleeping areas’.

Mammadov also noted in his letter that the facility is overcrowded.

‘There are only four toilets for more than 250 prisoners. As a result, prisoners are forced to wait in line for hours’, the letter read.

According to a Public Defender report, in the first three months of 2025, the Public Defender’s Office received 246 complaints from inmates and detainees about the conditions they were being housed in. In addition, 15 people complained to the Public Defender about living conditions in prison or detention centres, while 62 complained about abuse.

‘My acquaintance told me that colony N15 is also overcrowded and the prisoners sleep in the corridors, they don’t have any room. Resettling the prisoners is a big issue for the Penitentiary Service, which is why the colonies are overcrowded. This is not the only issue, another problem is the water. They receive polluted water which is black in colour, they could not even drink or use it’, a detainee’s acquaintance told OC Media.

News about the harsh conditions in prison colonies and pretrial detention centres has periodically spread in domestic independent media. After the arrests of journalists and civil society activists, this topic often surfaced on social networks. Despite this, the Ministry of Justice has never openly reacted to these statements.

Azerbaijani journalist Ulviyya Ali ‘threatened with rape’ by police in detention

Ulviyya Guliyeva (Ali) was detained on 6 May after covering the trial of imprisoned politician Tofig Yagublu.

OC MediaXandie (Alexandra) Kuenning