Detained Azerbaijani activist Huseynov charged with hooliganism
Religious activist Samid Huseynov has been detained in Azerbaijan. He is presumably charged and remanded in custody on an administrative charge of petty hooliganism. Associates link his arrest to the upcoming Ashura mourning period.
As reported by the Caucasian Knot, six female believers were arrested in 2025 on charges of hooliganism and disturbing public order. They were distributing refreshments (ehsan), and this was interpreted as an unauthorized protest. In October 2025, the Union for Freedom of Political Prisoners in Azerbaijan recognized them as political prisoners.
Activist Samid Huseynov has been unavailable for contact since the morning of June 19, his wife reported. “We are from Lankaran, but we are temporarily living in a suburb of Baku. My husband works at a construction site in the village of Mashtaga. On the morning of June 19th, he went to work. Soon after, he called and said he was being summoned to the police station in the village of Zabrat. After that, he didn’t answer the phone. Only on June 22nd, at the 15th police station, they told me that my husband had been held there for two days and was now under arrest in the Binagadi temporary detention center, accused of ‘hooliganism,’” the activist’s wife, Arzu Huseynova, told a “Caucasian Knot” correspondent.
According to her, the police did not specify the length of her husband’s arrest and only said that it was “an administrative case.”
Ashura is the tenth day of the month of Muharram (the first month of the Muslim lunar calendar (Hijri)). It is on this day that the culmination of the mourning events of Shiite Muslims dedicated to the memory of the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, Imam Hussein, who was killed on 10 Muharram 680 in a battle with the caliph's troops. In memory of the martyrdom of Hussein, it is customary in Shiite communities to hold mourning ceremonies - ta'ziyya, during which some participants commit self-flagellation, according to the "Caucasian Knot" report "Muharram. In 2017, the Caucasus Muslim Board called on believers to donate blood instead of self-flagellation on the day of Ashura. The "Caucasian Knot" also published reports "Sunnism", "Shiism", "Islam in Russia".
One of the Baku activists suggested that Huseynov was arrested in connection with the onset of the month of Muharram and the upcoming day Ashura.
“In the summer of 2022, on Ashura Day, Samid Huseynov hung a black flag as a sign of mourning on an antenna tower near a mosque in the village of Ramana. He was arrested for 30 days. Moreover, there was no information about him for the first four days after his arrest. Only on the fifth day did the Ministry of Internal Affairs issue a statement stating that he had violated the law on religious rites by hanging a religious flag on a telecommunications tower. And in 2023, he was arrested for two years on a drug charge. A few days ago, Samid was summoned to the police and warned that he had not hung any flags anywhere on Ashura Day (June 25). He said he had no such plans. Nevertheless, Samid was apparently arrested for administrative offences, as he is being held in the Binagadi detention facility, where those arrested under administrative offences are held. “He’ll probably be released after Ashura,” said the source, who did not want to be named.