Turan News Agency, Azerbaijani Opposition News outlet
Dec 25 2017
Azeri ex-defence minister detained
[Armenian News note: the below is translated from Azeri]
Azerbaijan's former defence minister Rahim Qaziyev has been detained, Turan news agency reported late at night on 25 December, citing his brother.
The police have not stated why he was detained, the report said. However, human rights defenders believe that it might have been due to the fact that Qaziyev sharply criticised President Ilham Aliyev's domestic and foreign policies in two recent interviews to Kanal-13 internet TV. The interviews were posted on the YouTube channel of Kanal-13 TV on 21 and 24 December.
Pro-government news website Haqqin.az in the early hours of 26 December posted a lengthy article, blaming Qaziyev, as well as the short-lived 1992-93 government, for the troubles the country experienced in the early 1990s, including the Karabakh war defeats.
The 74-year-old Qaziyev was Azerbaijan's defence minister between March 1992 and February 1993. He was arrested in 1993 and sentenced to death on charges of ceding the town of Susa to Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and then to 15 years in jail. He was granted a presidential pardon in 2005.