AI urges Baku to release all "prisoners of conscience"

The international human rights organization "Amnesty International" (AI) believes that the recent act of clemency has failed to solve the problem of political prisoners in Azerbaijan; therefore, the AI urged the country's top authorities to release all "prisoners of conscience".

Let us remind you that on March 18 the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev signed a decree to pardon 101 convicts; among whom there were four persons, which had been regarded by local rights defenders as political prisoners, namely, Orkhan Eyubzade, a youth activist of the "Musavat" Party, and Bashir Suleimanly, the Executive Director of the Centre for Monitoring Elections and Democracy Training (CMEDT). Besides, two believers – Ramil Veliev and Anar Gasymly – were pardoned.

"The release of two 'prisoners of conscience' in Azerbaijan is a positive step; however, the country's prisons still keep 20 other political prisoners. Therefore, this pardon can only be considered as a formal gesture aimed to reduce criticism on the eve of the first European Games in Baku," says the statement of the AI, received today by the "Caucasian Knot".

According to Denis Krivosheev, the Deputy Director of AI's programmes for Europe and Central Asia, if the Azeri regime is really seriously thinking about human rights, it should release all "prisoners of conscience" immediately and unconditionally.

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