Investigator requests punishment for Azerbaijani advocate Zibeida Sadygova

Orkhan Babaev, an investigator of the General Prosecutor's Office of Azerbaijan, appealed to the Azerbaijani Bar Association with a request to punish Zibeida Sadygova, a member of Bar Association, for violating the rules of conduct. Activists believe the investigator's request is aimed at removing Zibeida Sadygova from defending her client involved in the Ganja case and other political cases.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that 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.

Zibeida Sadygova said that Orkhan Babaev, an investigator for particularly important cases from the Investigating Department for Grave Crimes of the General Prosecutor's Office, filed a complaint against her yet on March 5. However, the advocate has not learned about the investigator's complaint until today. According to Zibeida Sadygova, the investigator's request is related to her participation in the defence of Mushvig Gurbanov, involved in the Ganja case.

"On February 20, the investigator rejected my request to interrogate Mushvig Gurbanov in my presence. The investigator believes that my request questions the defending activities of an advocate appointed by the state. Therefore, the investigator also appealed to the Bar Association with a request to punish me, since he believes that I had violated the regulation about the rules of conduct for advocates," Zibeida Sadygova told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. The advocate has also added that so far no proceedings have been scheduled for her case at the Bar Association.

Namizad Safarov, a coordinator of the Centre against Repression and Torture, a former member of the Azerbaijani Bar Association, considers the investigator's complaint filed against the advocate to be absurd.

"In fact, the investigator violated the rights of the advocates and her client by rejecting the request for interrogation. The defendant has the right to be interrogated in the presence of an advocate of his choice. The aim is obvious here: to remove Zibeida Sadygova from the protection of defendants in the Ganja case and political cases in general," Namizad Safarov told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on March 17, 2020 at 12:28 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.