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Fazil Mustafa: â€œCouncil of Europe Secretary General was not correct to say concrete word about another motivation of chargesâ€ â€“ INTERVIEW

Fazil Mustafa: â€œCouncil of Europe Secretary General was not correct to say concrete word about another motivation of chargesâ€ â€“ <font color=red>INTERVIEW </font>

16 November 2009 12:10 (UTC +04:00)

Chairman of Great System Party, MP Fazil Mustafa told APA.

- Fazil Bey, recently Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland, as well as German and Norwegian embassies issued strong statements against the Azerbaijani government regarding the court decision about imprisonment of two young activists. How do you value these statements?

- I advocate for approaching such issues not from political, but legal aspect. I think any court decision can not satisfy the parties for subjective and objective reasons and they can express sensitive protests. But in any case, the most important issue in the correction of any decision is to use legal opportunities till the end. We witnessed that solution of problems not in legal aspects, but under foreign political pressure caused undesirable results. I think father of one of the young bloggers â€“ honorable Hikmet Hajizadeh has more polished position on this issue. He told journalists that they are going to open next legal phase â€“ appeal procedure.

We also can assist solution of the problem in this direction as members of the parliament. My principal position is that it was not positive case that the embassies or Council of Europe Secretary General issued statements pressuring on Azerbaijan. It is not only question. They can form a habit to interfere in the internal affairs of Azerbaijan in the solution of other issues related to Armenians or others, which can seriously damage our national interests. One blogger is in jail in each of Germany, Croatia and Finland and two â€“ in the United Kingdom. How would accept the governments of those countries if Azerbaijani embassies demanded protection of their rights or to consider them as political prisoners. In any case, foreign embassies have to give legal value to the court decision and not to underline political motivation. It is confronting their diplomatic missions. Early experience showed that political pressure of the embassies lead to prolongation of term of imprisonment. But it would bring more positive results if they investigate opportunities for their releasing together with active position of countryâ€™s law-enforcement organizations.

- Council of Europe Secretary General connected imprisonment of two young activists with a satiric clip they released criticizing the government. Does such statement have any legal base?

- I donâ€™t know what clip is disputed there. But from the legal view, the Secretary General should see the indictment even if formally. If they quote some probabilities out of the indictment, they have to show sources. The Council of Europe Secretary General can claim the court decision, but it was not correct for him to say concrete word about another motivation of the charges. As I know there were no such claims or charges in the indictment.

- International organizations are frequently addressing the problem of political prisoners in Azerbaijan and after the last trial, German embassy condemned Azerbaijan in â€œcreating two more political prisonersâ€. As a lawyer, what is your opinion about the notion of â€œpolitical prisonerâ€?

- The notion of â€œenemy of peopleâ€ was so largely spread during the Soviet time that the society called all persons jailed without court decision or with other motivation â€œthe enemies of peopleâ€. Now it could concern the notion of â€œpolitical prisonerâ€ and rebels or domestic criminals are called so. I donâ€™t support the cases where â€œpolitical prisonerâ€ is used without coordination with law. Specially, such statement by the European country, which urged for supremacy of law, could be a question of disputes.

Azerbaijan is integrated into the mechanism of European Court and charges out of this mechanism could be only probabilities, which have no legal force. It is impossible to predict how the European Court, or closer distance, the Appeal Court will react to the decision of fist instance court. If some person is called â€œpolitical prisonerâ€, it can be decided only by the European Court. In any case, it is determined not by foreign embassies, but by the higher court instances. The European Court didnâ€™t use this phrase against any person so far. I would like to emphasize that it would be better to pass legal trail till the end, to unite efforts of human rights defenders and public community instead of to direct the issue toward the political deadlock.