Azerbaijan to announce amnesty for Republic Day

The question of political prisoners in Azerbaijan has become one of the main topics of the meeting of the Joint Working Group on Human Rights Issues with the participation of the delegation of the Council of Europe (CE). According to the human rights defenders, at the meeting, officials announced the upcoming possible amnesty of prisoners, including political prisoners.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on March 18, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev signed an order for pardoning 101 prisoners. The number of the persons released from prison sentence includes four persons treated by the Azerbaijani human rights defenders as political prisoners.

On April 9, the building of the Parliament of Azerbaijan hosted a meeting of the Joint Working Group (JWG) on Human Rights Issues, which was also attended by the delegation of the Council of Europe headed by Alexander Hessel, Special Representative of CE Secretary General, the head of the Directorate of Political Affairs. This was reported by Arzu Abdullaeva, the head of the Azerbaijani National Committee of the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly.

According to Arzu Abdullaeva, the topic of political prisoners has become one of the key problems during the discussions. In particular, the activists have raised the questions concerning the release of young activists of the movement "Nida", Ilgar Mamedov, the leader of the movement "ReAl", Intigam Aliev, the head of the NGO "Legal Education Society", Hilal Mamedov, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Tolyshi Sado", and other political prisoners.

Novella Djafaroglu, a member of JWG, a member of the Monitoring Group of Human Rights Organizations of Azerbaijan (MGHROA), and the head of the Society for Women's Rights, has expressed her hope that in May, one more amnesty will be announced, which will cover most of the political prisoners.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.