Azerbaijani human rights activists ask PACE to reinstate the post of the Rapporteur on Political Prisoners

The Federation of Human Rights Organizations of Azerbaijan (FHROA) has made a statement with a request to appoint a Special Rapporteur on Political Prisoners in connection with the facts of application of torture in the country.

The statement runs that the authorities of Azerbaijan would not fulfil their obligations before the PACE on releasing political prisoners.

In the opinion of the human rights activists, many political prisoners "were rejected fair revision of their criminal cases, early release, pardon or rendering adequate medical aid."

The statement emphasized that it was a result of the work of previous rapporteurs on the issues of political prisoners that today 32 persons remain in custody out of the initial list of 716 political prisoners.

However, in the autumn of 2005 a new rapporteur on political prisoners was not appointed, the PACE weakened its control over this problem and "the number of politically motivated arrests has went up, especially during the elections and after them."

The statement also notes that some political prisoners are arrested for the second time already (Natig Efendiev, Etibar Guliev), and "one of former political prisoners, Ms Farida Kungurova, on November 18, 2007, died in custody at unclear circumstances just a couple of weeks after her repeated arrest."

"Apart from Kungurova, at least 52 other political prisoners have died in custody, and on the average every month one person dies as a result of tortures applied in police stations or SIZO (pre-trial facilities)," the statement runs.