Torture still practiced in Azerbaijan

The use of torture by law enforcement agents in Azerbaijan is not a rare case, Elchin Bekhbudov, chairman of the office of the Committee against Torture in Azerbaijan told Caucasian Knot in a conversation. He said he was sorry that the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor General's Office preferred to conceal these negative patterns instead of revealing torture facts. Bekhbudov expressed surprise and indignation that Vilayat Eivazov, the former chief of the Department for the Combating of Organised Crime, was appointed Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and promoted to general. A man whose name features in all reports by international human rights organisations as one who personally tortured people has no right to occupy this office, according to Bekhbudov. He said the committee continued to receive complaints from citizens who had suffered because violence on the part of law enforcement agents.

Elchin Bekhbudov said Ruslan Bashirli and Sabukhi Agayev, chairman and a member of the youth association Yeni Fikir ("New Thought"), had recently applied to their committee. They said they had been delivered to an administrative building of the Internal Affairs Ministry where they had been tortured in order to make them give evidence against Reno L. Harnish, US ambassador to Azerbaijan, who allegedly provoked a revolution in Azerbaijan. The human rights activist said all torture cases would be mentioned in a report of the Committee against Torture. Besides, he said he was going to apply to the COE and the UN Committee against Torture with regard to these facts.

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