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Christoph StrÃ¤sser's report on Azerbaijan made public

18 December 2012 14:18 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Victoria Dementeva – APA. “The issue of political prisoners is still not resolved in Azerbaijan, despite the continuous efforts of the Parliamentary Assembly,” noted in the report “The follow-up to the issue of political prisoners in Azerbaijan”, which was made by Christoph Strässer, PACE co-rapporteur on political prisoners, and published in the PACE website.

This report is planned to be discussed at the PACE January session.

The co-rapporteur stated that he was not allowed to carry out the fact-finding visit to Baku by the Azerbaijani authorities, so for his report he used some comments, additional details, clarifications and other explanations concerning the different groups of cases from the non-governmental organisations.

Christoph Strässer added to the report the consolidated list of 85 alleged political prisoners and 27 alleged political prisoners who are no longer in prison. The list includes the persons imprisoned in the Public Chamber’s demonstration on April 2, editor of Islamzeri.az website Ramin Bayramov sentenced over keeping drugs and firearms, journalist of the “Khural” newspaper Aydin Janiyev sentenced over hooliganism, founder and editor-in-chief of the “Khural” newspaper Evez Zeynalli, who is standing trial, employee of “Seher” channel Anar Bayramov, employees of “Khayal” TV channel in Guba, acitivists of Azerbaijan Islam Party accused of keeping drugs and members of the group led by Said Dadashbeyli, who was imprisoned in 2007, persons arrested in hijab-related protests.

There are some mistakes in this list. For example, Tural Abbasli and Arif Hajiyev, whose names were included into the consolidated list of alleged political prisoners, have been already released.

Human right activist Saida Gojamanli told APA that they were informed about Strässer’s report in spring this year. She underlined that mistakes were made in this report that the names of 85 people were included into it: “We have sent information to Strässer on this several times. 16 people, who were included into his list, have been already released. Unfortunately, the mistake has not been corrected yet.”

She attributed the mistake to the fact that Strässer was not allowed to visit Azerbaijan: “If Strässer was allowed to come to Azerbaijan, the mistake would not have been made.”