Azerbaijan: Leila Yunus fears that police breaks into new office of IPD

On Tuesday, April 17, in Baku, two police officers tried to inspect the apartment of Leila Yunus, Director of the Institute of Peace and Democracy (IPD), where the new office of the organization is located. This was told to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent by the very human rights activist.

The apartment located in 53 in Nizami Street 53 used to belong to a grandfather of the human rights activist and, at present, it is her private property. Starting from December 2011, this apartment hosts the IPD, the "Women's Crisis Centre" and the "Campaign to Ban Landmines".

According to Leila Yunus, when policemen arrived, she was not in the apartment. According to her, two police sergeants came to the apartment at about 1:40 p.m. (12:40 a.m. Moscow time) and demanded that a female-activist, who was in the apartment, to let them in and present documents of all persons, "who work in that apartment."

"The policemen threatened the young woman to use force and take her to the police in case of her refusal. At the same time, sergeants failed to present their IDs and a search warrant or a court decision to invade into the private apartment," says Leila Yunus.

The young woman answered the sergeants that it was the apartment belonging to Leila Yunus and that she cannot let anyone to enter the apartment without the permission of the mistress of the apartment. In response, according to the human rights activist, the sergeants said in a rude manner that they knew "that was an office and that they also knew about the activities of that office." "Sergeants continued to threaten that, in any case, they would enter the apartment and that all activists should better all at once present their documents and give a list of all persons, who worked there," says Leila Yunus. After the sergeants were given the phone number of Leila Yunus, they left.

However, according to the human rights activist, there remains a danger of new police invasion and even of destruction of property, like the office of the IPD in Shamsi Badalbeili Street was destructed last August. According to Leila Yunus, at that time, the incident happened on the day after on August 10 the "New York Times" published her interview about the unlawful demolition of houses in the centre of Baku.

At present, Leila Yunus associate an attempt of the policemen to enter her apartment with the speech of President Ilham Aliev delivered on April 16 at the government meeting, in which he talked about paying to tenants of demolished houses of "fair compensation" and condemned the spread of false information by "provocative forces".

Comments from the police of the Yasamal District, in which territory the apartment-office of Leila Yunus is located, are still unavailable. The Azerbaijani Ministry of Internal Affairs has also not commented on the statement of the director of the IPD about the attempt of the policemen to enter her office.