BAKU - Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has pardoned several pro-democracy activists jailed earlier this year, a ruling party official said on Saturday, after international pressure over political repression in the tightly-controlled ex-Soviet state.
The amnesty - which saw 84 inmates pardoned - included youth activists Bakhtiyar Guliyev, Shahin Novruzlu, and Elsever Mursalli, who were sentenced to lengthy jail terms in May on charges including drug possession that their lawyers denounced as ‘bogus.’ The trio from youth group NIDA were arrested after they organised mass peaceful protests in the capital Baku against rights violations and corruption in the Caucasus nation. The charges brought against them were ‘false,’ rights watchdog Amnesty International said, adding that ‘some of them were tortured’ in custody.
Prominent rights activist Hasan Huseynli, who chairs the Intelligent Citizen rights group, has also been freed from prison. Accused of a knife attack, he was jailed in July for six years.
Senior ruling party official Aydin Mirzazade told AFP that the amnesty ‘shows once again how humane is the policy pursued by the head of state.’ The move comes amid mounting international criticism of Aliyev’s poor democratic record. Dissent in Azerbaijan is often met with a tough government response. Pro-democracy groups say the Azerbaijani authorities have clamped down on opponents since Aliyev was re-elected for a third consecutive term last year.
Rights groups estimate that dozens of political prisoners remain behind bars in the Caspian Sea nation. The government has consistently rejected such accusations. Aliyev, 52, was re-elected in October 2013 after a poll seen as flawed by international observers, extending his family’s decades-long grip on power in the oil-rich country. He first took power in 2003 following a disputed election after the death of his father Heydar Aliyev, a former KGB officer and Communist-era leader.