The independent media outlet Meydan TV has reported that police threatened to strip and rape six Shia women who were detained for allegedly protesting under the guise of holding a religious ceremony.
Meydan TV wrote that one of the six, Nigar Baghirova, claimed that police officers tore off her hijab by force.
‘The police attacked us and abused us. I tried to calm my child down because he was crying, but the police dragged us into a car and took us to the police station. There they threatened to strip us naked and rape us’, Baghirova told Meydan TV.
On 15 August, the women were reportedly detained as they were distributing alms in commemoration of Arba’in — which is observed 40 days after Ashura, the anniversary of the death of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Husayn ibn Ali.
The women were remanded to three months of pre-trial detention on charges of robbery committed by a group by prior conspiracy.
Yousef Bardouka
Baghirova also told Meydan TV that after her arrest, her house was raided.
‘There were about 20 police officers, including people in black masks and an investigator named Anar. The lawyer did not participate in the search. There is a surveillance camera installed near our house. They dismantled it and the modem, and turned off the lights in the house. They confiscated printed materials and the flash drive that I had brought with me, presenting them as my things’, Baghirova said.
Some of the women — Khoshgadam Guliyeva, Shargiyya Sadigova, and Arzu Huseynova — also told Meydan TV that they were not physically present at the alleged protest. Despite this, their houses were also raided.
According to information published by the Telegram channel Ar-Rad Info, when Shahla Farajova was arrested, police accompanied the woman to her home where they conducted a raid.
‘The investigator and the police officers accompanying Farajova planted a card with the inscription ‘Ya Hussein’ in her closet. Among her books, they also planted a thick book with a white cover. Noticing this book, Farajova shouted to the police: “I don't have a book of magic at home, you planted it on purpose” ’, Ar-Rad Info wrote.
According to human rights defender Arzu Abdulla Gulzaman, these arrests were likely a step to ‘intimidate believers, or more precisely, Shia Muslims, who are true to their religious beliefs. All these events once again prove that Islamophobia in Azerbaijan is taking an increasingly dangerous form’.
However, she told OC Media that police violence against detained religious believers has occurred previously.
On 15 August, the Interior Ministry detained three Shia women in the village of Bina who were distributing food on the street in honour of the Arba’in holiday.
‘According to the detainees, they were threatened and insulted at the police station, and even had their hijabs ripped from their heads’, Gulzaman said.
In another case, religious men who were detained ‘as part of a project to slander’ and arrest Shia believers on charges of drug possession were told the same thing by police: ‘If you refuse to sign the confession, we have drawn up, we will bring your wife from home to the police station and will [force her to open] her hijab’.
Gulzaman said that after this threat, the religious men were forced to sign a written confession at the police station admitting to purchasing drugs from ‘an unknown Iranian citizen’.
Aytan Farhadova
