14:35, 16 January 2020

In Baku, police stop protest rally held by parents of defendants in "Ganja case"

On January 15, in the capital of Azerbaijan, a protest rally was held in front of the Supreme Court (SC) building. In the course of the rally, relatives of the defendants in the "Ganja case" demanded the release of the arrested persons and blocked a road. The police pushed the protesters back.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on August 9, 2019, the court completed the consideration of the appeal filed by a group of persons, numbering 11 people, sentenced following the events in Ganja in July 2018. Four persons were released, and sentences of seven others were reduced. In August and September 2019, the court also pronounced decisions in the cases against other groups of the defendants. For some of them, the court mitigated the sentences, some of the prisoners were released, but some defendants were sentenced to 2-20 years of imprisonment.

On July 3, 2018, an assassination attempt was committed against Elmar Veliev, the head of the city administration of Ganja. Law enforcers treated the attempt as a terror act, and detained Yunis Safarov, a native of Ganja, as a suspect of committing the crime. After that, mass protests began, where protesters expressed dissatisfaction with the work of Veliev himself. On July 10, 2018, about 200 people took part in the protest action in Ganja and demanded to investigate not only the attackers' actions, but also Veliev's work. When dispersing the action, two policemen perished.

On January 15, parents of the persons involved in the "Ganja case" held a protest action in front of the Supreme Court building, the agency "Turan" reported on the same day.

During the protest action, dozens of people blocked the road. They were chanting the slogan: "Freedom!"

"Our children were illegally arrested, but no official is willing to meet us and listen to us," the "Turan" quotes one of the protestors as saying.

Policemen pushed the protesters back and unblocked the road, the "Contact.az" reported on January 15.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on January 16, 2019 at 08:02 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.