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Parliamentary committee chairman: Court verdict concerning Leyla and Arif Yunus â€˜quite humaneâ€™

21 August 2015 09:09 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Mubariz Aslanov – APA. Chairman of Azerbaijani Parliament's Committee on legal policy and state-building Ali Huseynli’s interview with APA

- The US Department of State, the European Union, the Council of Europe, OSCE officials and Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other international organizations has recently criticized the human rights situation in Azerbaijan, making statements over the arrest of Leyla and Arif Yunus.

- The progressive community in Azerbaijan has long been aware of above-named international NGOs are organizations created by western states and they operate in their shadow. In this respect, it’s no surprise that they make similar statements. There is an underlying reason for them to be concerned so seriously because Azerbaijani law-enforcement and security agencies have exposed facts of the US Department of State, the European Union, and the OSCE having allocated funds under the guise of grants through these NGOs in order to destabilize Azerbaijan. That is the political side of the issue…

As for judicial issues, international organizations need to understand even if attempts were made to cast doubt on Azerbaijani courts the imprisoned could never be released except through legal mechanisms: That is only possible when supreme courts are appealed to or through acts of pardon and amnesty. An immediate release can only be possible about persons being held in prisons like Guantanamo without trial.

- Some statements stress that the penalty regarding Leyla Yunus is inhumane…

I disagree with that approach. As you can see, the prosecutor has demanded 11 and 9 years in prison for them, whereas the court reduced their term to 8 years and 6 months, and 7 years.

If we have a look at court experience, we can see penalties imposed by court are usually one year shorter than that demanded by the prosecutor. Within the sanction of the court penalty over the case of Leyla and Arif Yunus, and also considering the accusing side’s position, the court has issued quite a humane verdict.

- Commenting on the court verdict, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Anne Brasseur said she was shocked by the sentencing of Leyla and Arif Yunus for eight-and-a-half and seven years of imprisonment, respectively.

- Azerbaijan does not have any obligations to the Council of Europe, those who are dissatisfied with the decision of the national court may apply to the European Court of Human Rights and everyone knows about it. But the problem is that the Council of Europe itself ignores the ECHR judgments. Otherwise, the points on the occupation of the Azerbaijani territories in the case “Chiragov and others versus Armenia’ would have been enshrined in the document adopted at the PACE summer session whereupon the Azerbaijani society has experienced the shock of this injustice and hypocrisy of the Council of Europe.

In fact, these statements have other objectives. We believe that international organizations, making such statements, try to create an anti-democratic atmosphere in the country ahead of the parliamentary elections.