ARRESTS IN MARCH 2019
Theologian Ruhullah Novruzzade
13 March
According to the site Islamazeri.com, an Azerbaijani citizen a second-year University student-theologian Ruhulla Novruzzade was detained at Baku airport early morning when he was returning from Iran where he studied at the Faculty of Law of Qom University (Iran). He came to Baku to visit his seriously ill hospitalized father. The police officers stated that the theologian is forbidden to enter the country at the behest of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Azerbaijan until 12 p.m. and he should be either deported back to Iran or detained and stayed in Baku.
It must be noted that the detained theologian is a son-in-law of the imprisoned theologian Hajji Abgul Suleymanov.
Late at night, the theologian sent a letter to the editorial office of Islamazeri.com, in which he precisely described what had happened to him at Baku airport. According to him, he was held in a special room at the airport without any explanation for a long time. It was not until around 6 p.m. he was informed by airport officials that his entry to the country was banned and he should return to Iran. Nevertheless, no protocol had been drawn up on the fact of deportation, no documents had been shown, and no one discussed with him an issue. He was just told to be ready to leave the country and at 23:30, he was sent on a board back to Tehran.
22 March
Anar Jabbarov
The Muslim Unity Movement has published a message on its Facebook page, which concerned the detention of the Movement activist Anar Jabbarov who has been living in Turkey. It became known, that he was detained by the Turkish police in Istanbul on 16 March due to “problems with his documents”. After being illegally detained at the police station he was suddenly transferred to the Binkilic Goз police department on the outskirts of Istanbul on the evening of 18 March. There, he was told that some clarifications were conducting and he would be released soon. At the same time, the detainee’s lawyer could not get any access to information concerning his client.
On 21 March, Anar Jabbarov was taken to the Consulate General of Azerbaijan in Istanbul, Turkey, where he had a short discussion between the staff of the diplomatic mission and some Turkish officials, afterwards he was taken back to the police department.
On 22 March, a lawyer who was assigned to meet with Jabbarov discovered that the Turkish authorities had sent his client again to the Consulate General of Azerbaijan and handed him over to the Azerbaijani diplomatic mission. The very same day Azerbaijani intelligence officers arrived from Baku to deport Jabbarov back to Baku where he was taken into custody under supervision of the General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime.