CoA rejects all petitions of defence of blogger Mekhman Guseinov

About a hundred people have come today to the Baku Court of Appeal (CoA) to support the blogger Mekhman Guseinov, whose case was preliminarily heard there.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on March 3, the Surakhani District Court of Baku sentenced Mekhman Guseinov, the head of the Institute of Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS), to two years of imprisonment, having found him guilty of defamation.

At the preliminary session on the complaint against the sentence to Mekhman Guseinov, his advocates put forward a number of motions. Fuad Agaev offered to take photos, and asked the court to allow, for at least five minutes, audio and video recording of the trial.

The defence also petitioned to stop the criminal case and acquit the defendant. In case of rejection of this petition, the defence asked to satisfy other motions, in particular, about changing the Guseinov’s freedom restraint measure and release the blogger from custody.

Mekhman Guseinov himself stated that he supported all the petitions of his advocates. "Of course, it would be nice, if they place me at least under house arrest; but in principle it does not make any difference to me what decisions this court takes, because everyone knows that I am not guilty; and I was arrested because of my reports and defence of rights of activists and journalists," said Mr Guseinov.

After a brief meeting, the court announced rejection of all motions, and appointed the hearing on the merits of the case for April 10.

The Mekhman Guseinov's defence has treated the outcome of the today's court session as negative.

"The court has failed to even formally attempt to create the visibility of an objective trial, and rejected even our technical motions," the advocate Elchin Sadygov stressed in his comment to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

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