Azerbaijani court jails three political activists

Agence France Presse — English
July 12, 2006 Wednesday 4:25 PM GMT

A court in Azerbaijan on Wednesday handed down sentences of up to
seven years to youth opposition activists charged with attempting to
overthrow the government, opposition parties said.

Three leaders of the Yeni Fikir (New Idea) movement, created ahead of
last year’s parliamentary elections to protest the rule of President
Ilham Aliyev, were sentenced in a closed session, one of the convicted
activists told AFP.

"We expected an unfair sentence because this was a political case
from the very beginning. The witnesses against us were government
agents and there was no hard evidence in the case," said a leader of
Yeni Fikir, Said Nuri, who was given a five year suspended sentence
for health reasons.

Nuri said the defendants were planning to appeal the ruling and then
take the case to the European Court of Human Rights if it was not
overturned in Azerbaijan.

Yeni Fikir was one of a number of protest groups that sprang up ahead
of elections last November, which ended up giving Aliyev almost
total control of the parliament in a vote deemed undemocratic by
international monitors.

Yeni Fikir’s leader, Ruslan Bashirli, was sentenced to seven years
in prison and a third activist, Ramil Tagiyev, received four years.

All three were arrested just weeks ahead of the November poll for
plotting what prosecutors said was an uprising backed by the US-based
National Democratic Institute (NDI), a pressure group, and money from
Armenia’s government.

The Popular Front of Azerbaijan opposition party, which supports Yeni
Fikir, said the convictions were part of a wider political campaign
aimed at stifling dissent.

"This was a political order. The authorities are trying to limit the
activities of democratic youth organizations. At the same time we
have again been shown that the court system is in the grip of the
authorities," said Isaak Alezoglu, a spokesman for the Popular Front.

NDI has denied training Yeni Fikir members to overthrow the government
but has been forced to curtail much of its activity in the oil-rich
republic after it was implicated in the plot.

International organizations have blamed Aliyev, who succeeded his
father as president in a controversial election in 2003, of stifling
media freedoms, cracking down on the right to freely assemble and
harassing the opposition.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress