Azerbaijan: defence to challenge conviction of CSP activist Omar Mamedov

The defence plans to appeal against the verdict passed to Omar Mamedov, a member of the "Civil Solidarity Party" (CSP) and the "Nida" movement, and a Facebook activist, sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment on charges of drug dealing. His advocates believe that the verdict was politically motivated.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Omar Mamedov was detained on January 24 on charges of large-scale drug selling. His colleagues said that the criminal case had to do with Mamedov's civil stand.

According to the lawyer Khalid Bagirov, "Mamedov was convicted not only for illegal possession of drugs, but also for selling them." He also expressed the opinion that "since the case is political, one should hardly expect justice from the Court of Appeal (CoA) either."

"But we have to go through all the instances in Azerbaijan, in order to apply to the European Court of Human Rights," said Bagirov.

Mamedov is sure that the real reason for his arrest was his administration of the pages "Selections from AzTV" and "Named after Geidar Aliev" on the Facebook, which sharply criticized the authorities. Three days before the Mamedov's arrest, he received information from the Facebook administration that within the last month the page of "Selections from AzTV" was visited by about 500,000 users.