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AZERBAIJAN CAN'T KICK THE HABIT: ANOTHER NGO ACTIVIST GETS PRISON-SENTENCE
EurasiaNet.org
July 17 2014
July 17, 2014 - 12:33pm, by Shahla Sultanova
For Azerbaijan, this week has been a busy one. But, critics charge,
not in the way you might expect from a country that holds a leadership
position in Europe's senior human-rights body, the Council of Europe.
On July 14, 57-year-old Hasan Huseynli, a prominent, regional
non-governmental-organization leader, was sentenced to roughly six
years in prison for allegedly illegally carrying weapons and supposedly
wounding a person with a knife.
It was a charge that took even the usually reserved US embassy aback.
"Given his mild manner and history of promoting civic engagement
and education, it is virtually impossible to believe Huseynli used
a knife against a local resident, as the prosecution claimed," the
embassy said in a statement.
Previously, Huseynli was the head of Ganja Education Information Center
established in 1998. The center helped young Azerbaijanis interested
in graduate and undergraduate education abroad, especially in the
United States.
For the past ten years, Huseynli, who has acted as a source for this
reporter, has run the Ganja-based Intelligent Citizen Enlightenment
Center Public Union (Kamil VE~YtE~YndaÅ~_" MaariflE~YndirmE~Y
ME~YrkE~Yzi Ä°ctimai Birliyi), a center that organizes various
youth-related activities to encourage civil society in western
Azerbaijan.
Most of its financing came from foreign sources; a fact likely to
raise an eyebrow in certain circles in Baku, given ongoing government
suspicions about NGO registrations.*
The Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum, a
European-Commission-associated club of NGOs from six former Soviet
republics (including Azerbaijan), earlier had charged that Huseynli's
March arrest was based on "trumped-up charges . . ." and that the
investigation was "completely unlawful and absurd . . . "
Some allegedly have speculated that the presidentially appointed mayor
of Ganja, Elmar Veliyev, got irritated by Huseynli's youth-organization
activities, and become the real cause of these criminal charges,
Contact.az reported, citing unnamed local sources.
Veliyev has not commented.
Local human rights defenders consider the charges against Huseynli
to be part of a larger crackdown on civil society that picked up
steam in November 2013, soon after Ilham Aliyev started his third
term in office.
In what many see as the latest sign of that trend, the general
prosecutor's office and the Ministry of National Security claimed
on July 17 that they had received video-recordings (from an
unidentified individual) supposedly showing jailed Zerkalo journalist
Rauf Mirkradirov receiving money from two Armenian civil-society
activists whom prosecutors claim worked for a group financed by
Armenian intelligence. Mirkadirov, who took part in citizen-diplomacy
initiatives with Armenia, was accused of espionage this April.
Mirkadirov's lawyers have dismissed these latest allegations, charging
that, once again, with such declarations, Azerbaiani officials are
not observing the right to the presumption of innocence, RFE/RL's
Azerbaijani service reported.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/69076
From: Baghdasarian
EurasiaNet.org
July 17 2014
July 17, 2014 - 12:33pm, by Shahla Sultanova
For Azerbaijan, this week has been a busy one. But, critics charge,
not in the way you might expect from a country that holds a leadership
position in Europe's senior human-rights body, the Council of Europe.
On July 14, 57-year-old Hasan Huseynli, a prominent, regional
non-governmental-organization leader, was sentenced to roughly six
years in prison for allegedly illegally carrying weapons and supposedly
wounding a person with a knife.
It was a charge that took even the usually reserved US embassy aback.
"Given his mild manner and history of promoting civic engagement
and education, it is virtually impossible to believe Huseynli used
a knife against a local resident, as the prosecution claimed," the
embassy said in a statement.
Previously, Huseynli was the head of Ganja Education Information Center
established in 1998. The center helped young Azerbaijanis interested
in graduate and undergraduate education abroad, especially in the
United States.
For the past ten years, Huseynli, who has acted as a source for this
reporter, has run the Ganja-based Intelligent Citizen Enlightenment
Center Public Union (Kamil VE~YtE~YndaÅ~_" MaariflE~YndirmE~Y
ME~YrkE~Yzi Ä°ctimai Birliyi), a center that organizes various
youth-related activities to encourage civil society in western
Azerbaijan.
Most of its financing came from foreign sources; a fact likely to
raise an eyebrow in certain circles in Baku, given ongoing government
suspicions about NGO registrations.*
The Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum, a
European-Commission-associated club of NGOs from six former Soviet
republics (including Azerbaijan), earlier had charged that Huseynli's
March arrest was based on "trumped-up charges . . ." and that the
investigation was "completely unlawful and absurd . . . "
Some allegedly have speculated that the presidentially appointed mayor
of Ganja, Elmar Veliyev, got irritated by Huseynli's youth-organization
activities, and become the real cause of these criminal charges,
Contact.az reported, citing unnamed local sources.
Veliyev has not commented.
Local human rights defenders consider the charges against Huseynli
to be part of a larger crackdown on civil society that picked up
steam in November 2013, soon after Ilham Aliyev started his third
term in office.
In what many see as the latest sign of that trend, the general
prosecutor's office and the Ministry of National Security claimed
on July 17 that they had received video-recordings (from an
unidentified individual) supposedly showing jailed Zerkalo journalist
Rauf Mirkradirov receiving money from two Armenian civil-society
activists whom prosecutors claim worked for a group financed by
Armenian intelligence. Mirkadirov, who took part in citizen-diplomacy
initiatives with Armenia, was accused of espionage this April.
Mirkadirov's lawyers have dismissed these latest allegations, charging
that, once again, with such declarations, Azerbaiani officials are
not observing the right to the presumption of innocence, RFE/RL's
Azerbaijani service reported.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/69076
From: Baghdasarian