Azerbaijani prosecutors seek up to 14 years for human rights activists

Anar Mammadli

Prosecutors in Azerbaijan have demanded prison sentences of up to 14 years for two prominent democracy activists on trial for smuggling.

State prosecutor Vusal Mehraliyev asked the Baku Serious Crimes Court on 24 July to sentence Anar Mammadli, head of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre (EMDS), to 14 years in prison.

He also requested a 13-year sentence for fellow activist Anar Abdulla.

Both men deny the allegations, which include smuggling committed by a group of persons in prior agreement.

The trial, presided over by Judge Aygun Gurbanova, is scheduled to resume on 6 August when defence lawyers will deliver their final speeches.

Mammadli was detained on 29 April 2024 and has remained in custody since. He maintains that the charges against him are baseless.

His co-defendant, Abdulla, was initially held in July last year and served a 30-day administrative sentence for minor hooliganism and failure to comply with police orders.

Abdulla said officers detained him as he stepped off a bus and denied committing any offence. Investigators later filed the same criminal smuggling charges against him as Mammadli.

Mammadli previously spent years behind bars following a similar prosecution.

In late 2013, the veteran human rights defender was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison on charges including illegal entrepreneurship and tax evasion. Local and international human rights organisations designated him a political prisoner before his release under a presidential pardon in March 2016.

Human rights groups say the prosecution is part of an ongoing crackdown against independent civil society in the country.

According to reports by human rights monitoring groups, there are currently 328 political prisoners in Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijani officials reject the allegations, stating that no one in the country is prosecuted for political reasons and that all legal actions pertain to specific criminal offences.