Azerbaijan: rights defenders worry of growth of detainees' and inmates' torturing

Today, activists of the Azerbaijani civil society have handed their appeal over to international organizations and expressed their concern of the expanded practice in recent years to torture defendants and inmates. The text of the appeal was drawn up on May 15.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, the appeal addressed to the OSCE, Secretary General of the Council of Europe (СЕ), Commissioner on Human Rights of the СЕ, EU's top managerial bodies and other international organizations was presented to journalists at the Baku Media Centre.

Leila Yunus, Director of Institute for Peace and Democracy (IPD), noted that the torture situation worsens from year to year. In 2006, 40 such cases were documented, in 2007 - 74 cases, in 2008 - 84 cases and in 2009 - 136 cases of torture were fixed. "That is, within four years the figure more than tripled," she said.

Ms Yunus has expressed her worry of the growth of number of deaths as a result of torture. In 2009, according to her story, seven persons died from torture, while in 2008 three persons were tortured to death.

Elchin Bekhbudov, Chairman of the Azerbaijani Committee against Torture, reported that for the first 4 months of 2010 fifty facts of torture were fixed. "These are only fixed facts, in reality the number of such facts admitted by law enforcement bodies and penitentiary system establishments is much higher," he said.

Speaking about the reasons of aggravation of the situation, Mr Bekhbudov noted that the authorities are more and more frequently ignoring human rights activists' signals. "When taking cases to consideration, the authorities assert all the time that the facts were not confirmed," he said.

"In spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority of torture cases and deaths from torture happen at police stations (under the Ministry of Internal Affairs), people are tortured and beaten to death also in the course of investigation (bodies of the Prosecutor's Office and the Ministry of National Security), and in jails (Penitentiary Service of the Ministry of Justice). Torture is also widely spread in the Armed Forces (Ministry of Defence)," runs the appeal.

In the opinion of the authors of the document, "one of the reasons of the broad spread of torture is in absolute impunity, and even in encouragement of law enforcers to use torture."

The activists of 32 organizations of the civil society of Azerbaijan, who signed the appeal, offered their international addressees six guidelines which, in their opinion, can positively affect the situation.

They called the international community to demand from the government of Azerbaijan "to ensure free access of civil activists and media to jails, temporary custodies, police stations and military units." It is also suggested to set up an independent institute of forensic-medical examination.

Civil society activists note the need to put the names of all the officials in charge of using torture in their subordinated entities into all documents of the OSCE, СЕ and EU dealing with human rights.

Along with it, it is offered to organize a special discussion at the PACE of the topic of fulfilment by Azerbaijan of its obligation to "prosecution the law enforcers who violate human rights and, in particular, apply torture." Besides, the appeal calls to organize a discussion by the session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE of the problem of using torture in Azerbaijan.

"Within the EU's project of Eastern Partnership, in view of the dramatic character of the situation, the torture issue should be identified as a separate direction of cooperation," the appeal further says.

Let us note here that officials from law enforcement bodies and power agencies of Azerbaijan deny all the facts of torture against defendants and prisoners.

"Jails and SIZOs (pre-trial prisons) subordinated to the Penitentiary Service are under constant monitoring of employees of international organizations - the Council of Europe, OSCE, International Committee against Torture, International Committee of the Red Cross and local human rights organizations. Should they fix any facts of torture, the government of Azerbaijan would be immediately informed," Mekhman Sadygov, head of the public relations division of the Penitentiary Service said in his conversation with the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent in his comments on the today's appeal of civil society activists.

Arif Babaev, Head of the Centre of Public Relations of the Ministry of National Security (MNS), treated the statements about torture in SIZOs of the Ministry as "absurd and prejudiced."

Ekhsan Zakhidov, deputy head of the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, refrained from comments saying that "he was on business trip in one of the districts of the country."

The press service of the State Office of Public Prosecutor said that "the information about the appeal of human rights activists had just arrived; it would be studied and reaction would surely follow."

In his turn, Eldar Sabiroglu, head of the press service of the Ministry of Defence, expressed his disagreement with statements about facts of torture in the armed forces. "Certain problems were possible in individual cases in the past, but it's unreasonable to present them to the public as facts of torture," he said.