Azerbaijan: Human Rights Defender Detained
Anar Mammadli, a prominent human rights defender and Head of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre. He is a co-founder of the Climate of Justice Initiative, a newly established group looking into the promotion of civic space and environmental justice within the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29), which will take place in Baku in November 2024. He was among the first activists in Azerbaijan who linked respect for human rights and climate justice, and were actively involved in international advocacy at the UN Human Rights Council and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
On 29 April 2024, Anar Mammadli was on the way to pick up his child from nursery when he was apprehended by unidentified masked men and driven away in a black vehicle. According to family members, police then searched Anar Mammadli’s house and allegedly planted money. The Ministry of Internal Affairs confirmed his detention and his sister reported that he is officially suspected of “smuggling by prior conspiracy by a group of persons” under Article 206.3.2 of the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan. He was reportedly denied access to his lawyer overnight when kept in a temporary detention centre in Baku. On 30 April 2024, Khatai District Court of Baku ruled to place him in pre-trial detention until the end of August 2024. Baku Appellate Court considered an appeal against the arrest of Anar Mammadli on 6 May, but the appeal wasn’t granted.
In 2014 Anar Mammadli was recognized as a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International when he was given a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence on trumped-up charges of tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurship, and abuse of office. While in prison he received the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) for his outstanding contributions to civil society in defending human rights.
The European Court of Human Rights stated that his arrest in 2013 was a violation of articles 5 and 1 (right to liberty and security); 5 and 4 (right to have lawfulness of detention decided speedily by a court); 18 (limitation on use of restrictions on rights). The Azerbaijani authorities failed to comply with the judgment.
He was pardoned in 2016 but has since faced repeated attacks from the authorities and the pro-government media, intensifying in the lead-up to COP29.
The current detention of Anar Mammadli follows a pattern of abuse of the criminal justice system aimed at silencing government critics including human rights defenders and journalists in Azerbaijan. Since last November, at least 11 journalists were also arrested on similar accusations of money smuggling. This includes Imran Aliyev, journalist and founder of parliamentary watchdog website Meclis.info; six journalists from investigative news outlet AbzasMedia: its director Ulvi Hasanli, his deputy Mahammad Kekelov; editor-in-chief Sevinj Vagifgyzy, staff journalists Elnara Gasimova, Nargiz Absalamova and investigative journalist Hafiz Babali as well as Aziz Orujov and Shamo Eminov from online news channel Kanal 13, the founder of independent news outlet Toplum TV Alasgar Mammadli and its journalist Mushfig Jabbar.