Advocate of the Azerbaijani opposition leader Gasanov states violation his client's rights in SIZO

A court in Baku has dismissed the defence's petition to transfer Azad Gasanov, an activist of the "Musavat" Party, to house arrest. The defence claims a violation of Gasanov's right to meet and talk by phone with his family members.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Azad Gasanov was arrested on October 12, on the following day after his return to Azerbaijan from Lithuania, where he stayed as a political emigrant. At home, he was accused of drug dealing. The oppositionist has claimed that he had given confessions under a threat of torture.

"Knowing that he could be persecuted in Azerbaijan, he returned there to see his seriously ill father," Osman Kyazimov, Gasanov's advocate, has stated, adding that after his arrest, Gasanov was never allowed to meet his relatives and make a phone call, although according to the law, he has the right to have one relative's visit and two 15-minute-long telephone conversations a week.

Recently, the ban on relatives' visits and telephone conversations during the investigation "has become a common practice against political activists," said Ogtai Gyulyalyev, the coordinator of the Centre for the Defence of Political Prisoners.

"Not only are people arrested on trumped-up charges, but at the SIZO (pre-trial prison), their rights are violated. We believe that this is done in order to break their will, to convince them of the 'futility' of political struggle. However, I think it is difficult to force politically mature people to give up their beliefs with such methods," he said.