Freedom House calls on Azerbaijani authorities to grant medical care to Intigam Aliev

The international human rights organization "Freedom House" has expressed concern about the health status of Intigam Aliev, a rights defender arrested in Azerbaijan, and urged the authorities to immediately provide him with the necessary medical care.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on April 22, the court in Baku found Intigam Aliev, the head of the non-profit organization (NPO) "Society of Legal Education", guilty of tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurial activities, misappropriation or embezzlement on a large scale and sentenced him to 7.5 years of imprisonment in a common-security penal colony.

On May 15, Intigam Aliev was unable to come to see his advocate at the SIZO (pre-trial prison), where he is kept, because of severe back pain and inability to walk. On May 21, although he could come, but was unable to keep sitting for a long time and had to return to his cell. Aliev gets no medical treatment and receives only painkilling drugs, said Shakhla Gumbatova, his advocate.

"It is inhuman that Azerbaijani authorities deny providing medical care to Intigam Aliev, a rights defender, sentenced to 7.5 years in prison on trumped-up charges," said Robert Herman, a vice-president for programmes of the Freedom House.

According to the statement of the Freedom House, released on May 27, the treatment of Intigam Aliev resembles the case of the Russian lawyer and businessman Sergey Magnitsky in Russia, where he died in the SIZO "Matrosskaya Tishina" in 2009 from a severe illness, because of non-provision of high-quality health care. "Therefore, we call on Azerbaijani authorities to provide Aliev with immediate and necessary medical care and to release him, as well as all other political prisoners," says the statement of the international human rights organization.

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