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    Categories: 2020

RFE/RL AZERBAIJANI service: Azerbaijani Opposition Activist Gets One Year In Prison

Azerbaijani Opposition Activist Gets One Year In Prison
December 01, 2020 15:27 GMT
        • By RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service

Azerbaijani oppositionist Mahammad Imanli (file photo)


BAKU -- A member of the opposition Azerbaijan Popular Front Party (AXCP), 
Mahammad Imanli, has been sentenced to one year in prison for breaking 
coronavirus measures, a charge he rejects as false, calling it politically 
motivated.

On December 1, Judge Mirheydar Zeynalov of the Sabuncu district court in Baku 
found Imanli guilty of failing to comply with coronavirus precautions and 
"spreading the disease."

Imanli rejected the court's findings saying he was sentenced "only because I am 
a member of the AXCP."

A day earlier, a prosecutor at the trial asked the judge to sentence Imanli to 
18 months in prison.

Imanli has insisted that a police statement noting he was detained on July 20 
was false.

According to him and his lawyers, he was detained on July 16 and kept in a 
police station for four days, during which time he was interrogated regarding 
his participation in unsanctioned rallies in Baku in support of the country’s 
armed forces amid an escalation of military tensions with neighboring Armenia.

Imanli is one of almost 50 AXCP members arrested in July after the rallies in 
support of the Azerbaijani Army.

Investigators have said that, during the unsanctioned rallies in mid-July, AXCP 
activists clashed with police injuring some of them, upended private vehicles, 
and damaged parliament.

Many of the activists who were detained were charged with damaging private 
property, attacking law enforcement officers, and disrupting public order.

Dozens of AXCP members have been arrested, and some imprisoned, in recent years 
on what their supporters have called trumped-up charges.

Opponents of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Western countries, and 
international human rights groups say his government has persistently persecuted 
critics, political foes, independent media outlets, and civic activists.

Aliyev denies any rights abuses. He took power in 2003 shortly before the death 
of his father, Heydar Aliyev, a former KGB officer and communist-era leader who 
had ruled Azerbaijan since 1993.



 
Emil Lazarian: “I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS