Eight members of Azeri pressure group detained over anti-Armenian protest

ANS TV, Baku
24 Nov 04

Excerpt from report by Azerbaijani TV station ANS on 24 November

[Presenter] The 58th Rose-Roth seminar of the NATO Parliamentary
Assembly is to open in Baku tomorrow [25 November].

To recap, Armenian MPs who are due to attend the seminar are expected
to arrive in Baku tonight. The Karabakh Liberation Organization [KLO]
has started protest actions against this. KLO members are holding
their action at Heydar Aliyev international airport at the moment.

[Correspondent over video of KLO members holding black balloons with
anti-Armenian posters attached to them] KLO activists have started
untraditional protest actions against the expected visit of Armenian
MPs to Baku within the framework of the 58th Rose-Roth seminar of
the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. In [Baku’s] Samad Vurgun Garden,
KLO members released into the air black balloons with posters.

[KLO Deputy Chairman Firudin Mammadov] All patriots of Azerbaijan
express their serious protest against the visit of Armenian MPs
to Baku and we insist that the government satisfy the Azerbaijani
people’s demand. Down with the people inviting Armenian MPs who have
occupied Karabakh and legally recognized it.

[Video shows people chanting this slogan and also “Karabakh or death”]

[Correspondent] Baku police tried to seize the protesters’ posters
tied up to the balloons and partially succeeded in doing so. However,
the protesters managed to release into the air the posters attached to
the black balloons also saying – Karabakh or death; Down with those
bringing Armenians to Baku; NATO, don’t support aggressor Armenia;
Aggressor Armenia should be banished from international bodies.

[Passage omitted: reported details]

Ceyhun Asgarov, Emil Babaxanov, ANS.

[Presenter] After the protest action in Samad Vurgun Garden, eight
KLO members were detained and taken to police station No 22.