24/04/2015 Monitoring
The co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) dealing with the monitoring of Azerbaijan, Pedro Agramunt (Spain, EPP/CD) and Tadeusz Iwinski (Poland, SOC), have expressed their deep disappointment at the sentence of seven-and-a-half years in prison handed to the lawyer and human rights defender Intigam Aliyev.
Mr Aliyev is a longstanding partner of the Council of Europe and has acted as a legal adviser in many cases against Azerbaijan pending before the European Court of Human Rights. His arrest, pre-trial detention and sentencing for facts linked to his NGO work complicates human rights activity in Azerbaijan, and would appear to be part of an attempt to make this work impossible.
The co-rapporteurs call on the authorities to investigate these events and to provide an explanation for the severe sentence given to this human rights defender.