Azerbaijan sentences activist Asaf Ahmadov to eight years in prison

Asaf Ahmadov

An Azerbaijani court has sentenced civic activist and educator Asaf Ahmadov to eight years in prison following a trial he denounced as politically motivated.

Ahmadov, who heads the Ganja Regional Community Centre, was convicted of money laundering, abuse of power, and forgery on Wednesday at the Ganja Grave Crimes Court.

He has been held in pre-trial detention for 14 months and has denied all the allegations against him.

The prosecution, led by state prosecutor Ikhtiyar Shabanov, had requested a 10-year prison sentence.

In his final address to the court before the verdict was delivered, Ahmadov compared his prosecution to historical trials of intellectuals, including the Greek philosopher Socrates and Soviet-repressed Azerbaijani writer Huseyn Javid.

The charges against me are merely hypotheses hidden behind legal terminology," Ahmadov told the court, according to details shared on social media by activist Abulfaz Gurbanli. "There is no crime here. The goal is to silence someone who wants to do something for civil society."

Ahmadov, who is also a history teacher, urged the judges to act with "legal courage" and acquit him, rather than forcing him to seek justice at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Dirty money tales can be written, but no indictment can block my idea of honesty and my clean past," he said.

He was arrested in April 2025 as part of a wider government crackdown on non-governmental organisations, widely known in Azerbaijan as the "NGO case".

Local rights groups estimate that approximately 15 civil society representatives have faced criminal prosecution under the sweeping investigation, which began in March 2025.

Other prominent figures currently detained in connection with the case include Bashir Suleymanli, head of the Civil Rights Institute, and Mammad Alpay, executive director of the Election Monitoring Alliance.

Another activist linked to the case, Zamin Zaki, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on 11 March.

Azerbaijan's government has consistently rejected allegations that its prosecutions of activists, journalists, and civil society members are politically motivated, maintaining that all individuals are tried strictly in accordance with domestic law.