Persecutions in Azerbaijan: plain people suffer

The Institute of Peace and Democracy (Azerbaijan) keeps on informing of the unceasing persecutions of the opposition after the elections of October 15. The letter of Institute's director Leyla Yunus is given below:

Citizens suffering from repressions continue to address the Crisis Center of the Federation of Human Rights Organizations of Azerbaijan. Here is one of the typical messages of October 29, 2003.

Nagiyev Nofel, 1957, a member of the Musavat Party, addressed the Crisis Center. On October 15, 2003, he was an observer at polling station 29 of district 23 in the Nasimi-Narimanov region.

According to his words, in the evening of October 18, a district police officer came to his house and said that the chief of Police Department 29 of the Yasamal region wanted to talk to him. Already in the evening of October 18, Nagiyev was delivered to the Police Department of the Yasamal region, where the chief named Faig shouted, offended and threatened him. Nagiyev Nofel spent the night in the police department, and in the morning of October 19, he was taken to the Yasamal Court. There Judge Ismailova inflicted an administrative punishment of 15 days by Article 330.1, without participation of a lawyer and witnesses. Nagiyev himself still does not know what this article means and what he was convicted of.

After the court Nagiyev was sent to the Yasamal Police Department where he was kept from October 20 to October 25. The latter also appears to be a violation of the acting Law on the Police, according to which to keep people more than 48 hours in an isolation ward of a police department is prohibited. So after the verdict had been announced, he was supposed to be sent to an isolation ward where people sentenced to administrative punishments were kept.

There were 4 beds in the prison cell where Nagiyev was kept, but there were eight to ten people serving their sentences. They slept taking turns on the bars as they were not given any sheets. Grocery parcels of the relatives fed them.

There were people with him in the cell who had multiple traces of beatings on their bodies. Those people were released only after the traces of beatings had disappeared.

The investigators put psychological pressure upon him during interrogations and urged him to testify against Rauf Arifoglu, editor of the "Yeni Musavat" newspaper.

He was released on October 25. On October 26, he turned up to work to Baku Wagon DEPO where he worked as a carpenter. But at work he was urged to bring an explanatory application, a copy of the sentence, and he was dismissed after it. He has not been acquainted with a copy of the order and the reason of his dismissal so far.

This is a typical story. Along with the hundreds of the arrested, another group of people have started to address the Center. These are people dismissed from their places of employment because of their affiliation with the opposition parties or their family members' belonging to the opposition parties.

The Azerbaijan Interior Ministry propagated information there were about 200 people released from administrative imprisonment. However, the released are being arrested again and called to criminal liability.

The arrests are going on, as well as the application of violence towards the arrested.