Tag: NIDA

popular citizen journalist and activist detained

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On March 14, citizen journalist Mehman Huseynov and member of NIDA civic movement Ulvi Hasanli were detained by the police. Speaking to Turan News Agency, Mehman Huseynov said, police stopped both men while on an assignment, in Novkhani village, investigating Saleh Mammadov, a government official who is the Chairman of the Board of the Azerbaijan State Agency of Motor Roads. “We were stopped by the Road Patrol Service. They took us to the  Absheron District Police office [Novkhani village is situated in Absheron administrative district]. They questioned us there. Took my drone.” Huseynov also said, after getting questioned at the police department, they were taken to a location they did not know as their eyes were tied. At the time, journalist Ulviyya Ali reported that both men were transferred to the Grave Crimes Unit. 

After being held for several more hours both men were released, but authorities kept the drone. 

In their statement, the Ministry of the Interior said, the operation of the drone, was illegal, even though according to Azerbaijan’s national aviation authority, the State Civil Aviation Authority of Azerbaijan (CAA), flying a drone is legal in Azerbaijan. That being said, there is no law or state regulations on flying drones in Azerbaijan. According to this BBC Azerbaijan service story from 2019, before flying a personal drone, the owner must seek permision first from the State Civil Aviation Authority.

Mehman Huseynov is the author of a popular Sancaq TV, a socio-political magazine, which documents extensive corrupt practices and violations of human rights in Azerbaijan. 

In 2017, shortly after President Ilham Aliyev, appointed his wife, Mehriban Aliyeva as the First Vice President, Huseynov did a short video, asking male residents of Baku, whether they would appoint their wives as first secretaries if they were heads of companies. Huseynov was arrested the following day and later ended up serving a two-year prison term on charges of slander. Some speculated this satirical video was the real cause behind the journalist’s arrest. 

Ahead of his release from jail in 2019, the authorities attempted at keeping him behind bars, albeit unsuccessfully, and Huseynov was released. 

This is not the first time Huseynov was persecuted for his activities. He was questioned by the police countless times, threatened, intimidated, placed under a travel ban for five years, his personal documents were confiscated. The Human Rights House Foundation has documented in detail the reprisals against Huseynov in recent years. On March 9, AIW reported that Sancaq TV’s Facebook page was targeted in a series of hacking attempts and numerous fake Sancaq TV Facebook pages were set up. It was possible to remove only of those pages, as Facebook found no evidence that the other pages, were impersonating Sancaq TV due to lack of content shared on these pages.

Ulvi Hasanli is a member of NIDA civic union. He is also an editor of abzas.net, a news website covering human rights violations across the country. The website has been targeted since 2016 with DDoS attacks. In 2017 the website was blocked and the management team switched its extension to .org. Most recently the platform was targeted in February of this year. In April 2020, the website lost a month’s worth of published articles and some of the headlines of articles were changed.

youth activist gets detention over criticism online [Updated March 4]

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[Update] On March 3, Sumgayit Appeal Court held a hearing in the case of arrested N!DA member Elmir Abbasov. During the hearing, Abbasov recounted how he was taken off the street, beaten, and humiliated by the local police and how they planted drugs on him. The presiding judge, Elman Ahmadov, prevented journalists, civil society representatives, and Abbasov’s family members from entering the courtroom reported Azadliq Radio. Abbasov’s lawyer, Elchin Sadigov, said, this constitutes a violation of the court’s transparency principle. All of the lawyer’s motions were dismissed, including a request to study camera footage on the day of the arrest, as well as the questioning of Rauf Babashov, the Deputy Chief of Sumgayi City Police department. 

The case launched against the activist claims, Abbasov was detained as a suspect in the theft. The activist rejects the case brought against him. In his statement, Abbasov said, he went to buy bread from the market, when he was stopped by plainclothed men. They told Abbasov he was to come with them to the police station. When he refused to follow the men, asking for an official warrant, he was shoved into the car and taken to the city police department. In his statement, Abbasov said after arriving at the city police department he was held there for five hours, after which he was transferred to police station no.4. “They threatened me. One police officer named Bahruz started shaking me and using derogatory language on our way to the station. When we got out of the car, he dragged me by my jacket. Then he started hitting me at the entrance to the station. At that moment another officer, under the pretext of rescuing me, dropped drugs in my pocket,” recounted Abbasov in court. 

Police claim they found drugs on Abbasov during their search. But Abbasov’s lawyer, Elchin Sadigov argues the delay in full body search, even by half an hour after an arrest is suspicious. Especially when Abbasov remained under police custody for several hours and was searched hours later. 

Despite the lawyer’s motion to release Abbasov, the court rejected the appeal and kept its previous decision in the case of the activist  – one-month administrative detention. 

On February 22, Elmir Abbasov, a member of civic movement N!DA [translation: exclamation mark] was arrested in Sumgayit. He was sentenced to 30 days in administrative detention on bogus drug possession charges. 

Abbasov’s friends, refute drug allegations, saying the arrest is connected to his posts online, critical of the ruling government and that Abbasov was kidnapped in front of his home in Sumgayit city.

Following Abbasov’s arrest, N!DA movement issued this statement: “Member of N!DA and activist Elmir Abbasov was detained several days ago. We were only able to find out today [February 22]. Elmir Abbasov’s lawyer, Zibeyde Sadigova confirmed his detention. Elmir Abbasov was sentenced to 30 days in administrative detention in accordance with Article 206 of the Code of Administrative Offenses [Illegal consumption of drugs, psychotropic substances, preparation, acquisition, storage, transportation, or shipment in the amount of personal consumption without the purpose of sale]. Surely, the reason for Elmir Abbasov’s arrest is his political and social activism, his posts on social networks. Elmir Abbasov’s arrest is yet another example of persecution and repression against political activists. The primary condition for having a civil and just political environment in Azerbaijan is to stop all political repressions and release of all political prisoners. All political prisoners and Elmir Abbasov must be freed!”

Nidaçı fəal Elmir Abbasov bir neçə gün öncə Sumqayıt polisi tərəfindən saxlanılıb. Bu barədə məlumatı bu gün əldə…

Posted by Nida Vətəndaş Hərəkatı on Monday, February 22, 2021

Abbasov’s most recent post was published on February 16 which gives ground for his friends and colleagues to believe, that the cause of Abbasov’s arrest was this post. “The people of Azerbaijan know the truth, but do not speak it. The people know, that the main culprit of corruption in the country is Ilham Aliyev. The ministers, the government officials are simply a small part of this scheme. Is it really possible that billions are removed from the state budget and the head of state is unaware of this? Of course, he does and he also profits from it. So if people are aware of this, why they don’t say anything? Because the people are afraid of Ilham Aliyev. They are afraid of the things they may lose [employment, community, freedom, lives] if they go against Ilham Aliyev […]”

Azərbaycan xalqı həqiqəti bilir amma onu demir. Xalq bilir ki, ölkədə baş verən milyardlıq korrupsiya faktlarının əsl…

Posted by Elmir Abbasov on Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Independent journalist, Ulviyya Ali, reported on February 23, that Abbasov was tortured and beaten by the officers. “He was beaten both inside the car right after he was kidnapped from the front of his house and then at the station. He was threatened with torture unless he removed the post about Ilham Aliyev,” wrote the journalist via her Twitter account. 

The corruption allegations Abbasov alludes to in his Facebook post, are reflected in Azerbaijan’s global ranking on Corruption Perception Indexes. According to 2020, Transparency International global CPI Azerbaijan ranked 129 out of 180 countries. The most recent corruption scandal where Azerbaijan’s name cameos is this investigation, published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Project (OCCRP) on February 22. The investigation revealed how since 2015, Azerbaijan sold weapons stockpile to Congo-Brazaville. Although it was not possible to allocate the exact price the Congolese regime paid for the shipments, one expert said, it was possibly worth tens of millions of dollars, according to the investigation.

In 2017, another corruption scandal, Azerbaijani Laundromat exposed how the ruling elite ran a secret slush fund and a complex money-laundering scheme. The fund was mostly used to help whitewash Azerbaijan’s international image at the Council of Europe. Several delegates of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council (PACE), were among the recipients of the laundered money and were later expelled. 

These are just a few recent examples of how far and deep corruption runs. 

Elmir Abbasov is not the first activist to receive a bogus administrative sentence, fines, or face police violence over social media posts. This has been the case over recent years where scores of activists received offline punishments over their online comments, posts, and in the case of journalists, stories.  

forced posts removal from Facebook continue in Azerbaijan

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On January 13, Elmir Abbasov, a member of NIDA movement, was taken against his will to local police station in the city of Sumgayit where he was questioned over his Facebook post about president Ilham Aliyev.

In his interview with Azadliq Radio, Abbasov said, he was on his way to a shop when a man told Abbasov to get into the car for a chat at the police station. Abbasov, who said without a warrant he won’t be going anywhere, was then shuved into the car and taken to the station by force.

Abbasow spent the next two hours at the police station, where he was informed that the reason for his interrogation was a Facebook post, he wrote about the President. He was told to immediately delete the post. 

AIW spoke with Abbasov about the content of the post which is no longer available on the social media platform.

Under normal circumstances this post would not be considered critical but in Azerbaijan, the sensitivity around certain personalities as in the case of the president are common and not tolerated. 

In the case of Abbasov’s post, it was a comment about an economic system heavily reliant on hydrocarbons. This has been voiced by international financial institutions, experts and pundits alike for a long time.

Similarly, Abbasov’s post stressed the country’s economy, over reliance to fluctuating oil price as a result of its dependence and recommended that the president takes recommendations by independent economists seriously rather than dismiss them. 

Three days before Abbasov was taken to the police and ordered to delete his post from Facebok, one freelance journalist [name omitted due to safety concerns] was told to delete a Facebook post, that was critical of the local law enforcement. Namely, the journalist desrcibed seeing one officer, take a bribe from a man stopped on the street as part of the COVID measures in place. The source told AIW, the measure was taken in an attempt to keep the reputation of the local agency clean.