TORTURE AND REPRESSIONS IN JULY 2020
3 July
All rights of the convicted Yunis Safarov are obliterated
Yunis Safarov
On 3 July 2018, Yunis Safarov shot at the then Ganja Mayor, Elmar Valiyev. Yunis Safarov was immediately captured and arrested on the spot, and since then he has been held in the pre-trial detention centre No. 1 in the village of Kyurdakhani.
His family members have been unable to communicate with him on the phone even two years later.
His lawyer, Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, told the media that he had a meeting with Yunis Safarov on 1 July,
“Yunis has psychological problems. He is very tense, and sometimes he cannot control his own actions. After all, he has not been allowed to contact his family on the phone for the period of two years by now”
Mr. Hajiyev, a lawyer, also pointed out that the Article 19.1 of Azerbaijan’s Law “On ensuring the rights and freedoms of detainees in custody” provides that a person arrested upon the issuance of a custodial sentence “may meet and hold confidential communications with his lawyer and legal representative in private, without limiting the number and duration of the meetings”.
However, according to Hajiyev, all his client’s rights are being totally violated,
“I submitted a request to the Court to meet and establish telephone contact with Yunis Safarov’s family members. However, the Court denied my request due to the absence of a procedural ruling issued by the authorities conducting the criminal prosecution. Yet, in response to our petition, the Penitentiary Service stated that there were no applied restrictions in relation to Yunis Safarov, including the meetings with his family members. It means that Yunis Safarov’s rights were restricted on the basis of a verbal instruction. Moreover, during the investigation, it is sometimes prohibited to have meetings between the detainee and his family members. But Yunis Safarov’s case has already been brought to the court and, therefore, no one can forbid him to meet with his family members. This is a measure against the Law. An open trial has already started.”
The lawyer has also appealed to the Ombudsman on several occasions but there has been no reaction to his appeals.