Agence France Presse — English
September 14, 2005 Wednesday 12:36 PM GMT

New opposition arrest in alleged Azerbaijani anti-government plot

BAKU

Azerbaijani authorities Wednesday detained a third leader of an
opposition youth group allegedly involved in anti-government
activities, raising tensions in the run-up to parliamentary polls, an
opposition spokesman said.

Ramin Tagiyev, a leader of the Yeni Fikir (New Idea) youth protest
movement, was arrested Wednesday, just two days after the arrest and
subsequent hospitalization of Yeni Fikir’s Said Nuri.

“I think they’re trying to take out the whole executive committee of
the organization,” said Murad Gasanly, a spokesman for the Azadlyq
opposition block with which Yeni Fikir is affiliated.

Prosecutors were not available for comment Wednesday afternoon.

This week’s arrests followed the August detention of the group’s
leader, Ruslan Bashirli, who was implicated in an alleged plot to
overthrow the government in a Ukraine-style popular uprising at
parliamentary elections in November.

The Azeri authorities have claimed that Yeni Fikir took its
instructions from a prominent US democracy pressure group — the
National Democratic Institute — and has been funded by Azerbaijan’s
arch-rival Armenia.

Nuri, another of the group’s leaders, was hospitalized on Tuesday
with what appeared to be liver problems. His condition was still
unclear on Wednesday.

The arrests were also condemned by Ali Kerimli, leader of the
National Front, one of the main parties in the Azadlyq opposition
bloc.

“I strongly condemn these arrests. … The authorities fear that if
the group is not destroyed before the elections it could mobilize the
youth to become politically active,” Kerimli said.

Yeni Fikir participated in a demonstration by some 20,000
anti-government protestors in the capital Baku on Saturday to mark
the official start of election campaigning.

The last national vote in the mostly Muslim republic, the 2003
presidential elections in which Ilham Aliyev took over as president
from his father Heydar Aliyev, ended in two days of rioting and
hundreds of arrests.