Baku policemen accept application about attack from rights defender Ismaylova

On Wednesday, January 28, the rights defender Gyunay Ismaylova was invited to the Baku police department, where they accepted her application about the attack on her. According to Ismaylova, she was informed that the inquiry into the incident would be run by the district prosecutor's office.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on January 26 Gyunay Ismaylova, a lawyer of the Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety (IRFS), said that some unidentified man grabbed her by the throat and tried to punch. The woman called neighbours for help, after which the assailant fled.

Gyunay said that after the police refused to take her application on January 26, she wrote a letter about it to the email address of the Interior Minister Ramil Usubov.

According to her story, the police asked about her enemies. "It looked like they wanted to bring the incident down to a domestic conflict," she said.

In her opinion, the attack was aimed to intimidate her or temporarily deprive her of the ability to work.

Another reason for the attack on Ismaylova could be, as she believes, her critical article published in The New York Times on October 22, 2014, a about the human rights situation in Azerbaijan, which was co-written with Samir Kazymly, the coordinator of the Alliance for Defence of Political Freedoms.

Ismaylova also noted that after her summons for questioning to the General Prosecutor's Office (GPO) in August 2014, she felt that she was shadowed. Now, she doubts of the objective of investigation.

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