ECtHR accepts Azerbaijani activist's complaint about customs' checks

Samir Kyazymly, an Azerbaijani human rights defender and the coordinator of the Alliance for the Protection of Political Freedoms, has complained to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) that he is constantly unreasonably checked at customs when leaving Azerbaijan and coming back home. On April 19, the ECtHR notified him that his complaint had been registered.

The rights defender has stated that since November 2014 he had been repeatedly subjected to checks at Azerbaijani border checkpoints. "I am taken to a separate room; and there they check how much money I have, whether I have any bank cards; they copy them and my passport pages, where there are visas; they inspect my hand luggage. I am forced to fill out a declaration on exported and imported money, even if I have just 50-100 US dollars. Then they ask questions about the aim of my trip. Finally, they report all this to someone by phone and, having received the answer, let me go," Mr Kyazymly told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

According to his story, over the past five years he was checked in this way for 34 times. "That is, they did it during all my trips without any clear explanations," said Kyazymly.

He treats these checks as biased. In his opinion, they have to do with activities at the NGO and publication in foreign media.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on April 21, 2019 at 00:28 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.