Number of political prisoners in Azerbaijan reaches 357

PanARMENIAN.Net - The list of political prisoners in Azerbaijan has reached a record 357 names.

Between March and June 2024, 16 new names were added to the list, bringing the total to 303. According to Elshan Hasanov, coordinator of the “Union for the Freedom of Political Prisoners of Azerbaijan” and head of the Political Prisoners Monitoring Center, this is the first time since the early 2000s that the number has exceeded 300. By September 2024, the list included 319 individuals, and by December, it had grown to 331, reports Caucasian Knot.

In 2024, the number of political prisoners in Azerbaijan reached its highest level since the country joined the Council of Europe. The most significant increase has been observed in the past year.

On February 12, the Union for the Freedom of Political Prisoners of Azerbaijan published a new list containing 357 names. The list was compiled by the union’s coordinators, including Leyla Yunus, director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy, and Elshan Hasanov.

Hasanov also confirmed the inclusion of Talish activist Mirhafiz Jafarzadeh in the list.

"Mirhafiz Jafarzadeh, an orientalist by profession, has been actively engaged in the country’s socio-political life. In 1995, he moved to Russia and rarely visited Azerbaijan but remained interested in his homeland’s situation. He actively advocated for the Talish language and promoted the creation of school textbooks in Talish. Because of this, he drew the attention of security services.

In November 2022, during a visit to Azerbaijan, he was arrested on charges of treason and inciting hatred. Jafarzadeh denied the accusations, calling them ‘absurd.’ The court did not conduct an objective trial and sentenced him to 16 years in prison. We have only now added him to the list because we could not access case materials for a long time," Hasanov explained.

Additionally, the list includes five religious activists arrested under drug-related charges.

"These individuals supported the families of other arrested believers and ended up behind bars themselves," said Hasanov.

The list also includes five prisoners convicted under the Terter case, one of whom was sentenced to life imprisonment.

"The families of these individuals were afraid to approach human rights defenders for a long time. Only now did they come forward, and after reviewing their cases, we concluded that, like others already exonerated in this case, they were forced to confess under torture, and no credible evidence was presented against them. The same applies to Hamza Mammadli and Nadir Mageramov, convicted in the Ganja case. The latter was even sentenced to life imprisonment in 1994 for incidents in the Gubadli region during the First Karabakh War in the so-called ‘Garangush’ squad case," Hasanov noted.

In the spring of 2017, a group of military personnel and civilians were arrested in Baku on charges of collaborating with Armenian intelligence and preparing acts of sabotage. During the investigation, eight individuals died as a result of torture, four of whom were posthumously exonerated. In 2021, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe stated that more than 200 servicemen had been victims of torture in this case, with 11 dying. On November 1, 2021, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s Office officially acknowledged that the Terter case involved torture against the accused.