Baku Today
July 12 2004
KLO Activists Begin Hunger-Strike
Three members of the Karabakh Liberation Organization (KLO) started a
hunger strike on Monday in protest of the ongoing arrest of the KLO
activists detained for their unauthorized protest against the
Armenian participation of a Baku-hosted NATO conference on June 22.
The KLO activists, Barat Imani, Gultakin Quliyeva and Khayyam
Naghiyev, launched the hunger protest in the headquarters of the KLO,
demanding that the jailed KLO activists be released.
Baku’s Nasimi District court in late June sentenced six activists of
the KLO, including the organization’s leader Akif Naghi, to two
months in pre-trial imprisonment and the Appeals Court later upheld
the verdict.
Naghi, along with five other KLO activists, Firidun Mammadov, Mursal
Hasanov, Ilkin Qurbanov, Rovshan Fatiyev and Manaf Kerimov, are
charged with resisting police, violating public order and
hooliganism.
The KLO members on June 22 protested Armenian participants of the
planning conference for NATO’s `Cooperative Best Effort-2004′
exercises, Col. Murad Isakhanyan and Sen. Lt. Aram Hovhanesyan, by
breaking into a conference hall of Baku’s Grand Hotel Europe, where
the event was taking place.
As a result, the conference was stopped for several minutes. There
were no reports of serious injuries on either side.
The Sheik of the Caucasus Muslims, Allahshukur Pashazade and 21
members of the Azerbaijani parliament have appealed to the General
Prosecutor’s Office (GPO) to free the arrested on bail. However, GPO
has not responded positively yet.