00:49, 27 January 2018

Talekh Bagirzade regards new charge against him as authorities' order

Talekh Bagirzade. Photo: screenshot of the video published on the YouTube channel Taleh Bagirzade

Talekh Bagirzade, the leader of the "Muslim Unity" movement, who is serving his 20-year prison term under the riot case, has rejected the charge of keeping prohibited items in his prison cell.

On December 26, his advocate reported about a new case opened against his client. The Azerbaijani Ministry of Justice (MoJ) suspected him of keeping some object, forbidden by the prison rules. Investigators have treated his memory cards as piercing-cutting objects.

On January 25, 2017, the court sentenced Talekh Bagirzade to 20 years in prison under the case of riots in Nardaran. His 17 of his supporters were also sentenced to long prison terms. The defendants, who claimed that they were tortured, refused to plead guilty.

Bagirzade has treated the new charge as "investigator's fiction," said Fariz Namazly, his advocate. "Talekh Bagirzade himself noted at the trial, many inmates of the Gobustan Prison have memory flash cards with music or stories. If they are prohibited by the law, the question is, how these cards got into prison," said the advocate.

According to Namazly, Bagirzade has accused the Azerbaijani authorities of political persecution.

The new criminal case against Bagirzade "confirms the law enforcers' bias against him," since the cases under this article are very rarely initiated, said Elshan Gasanov, the head of the Political Prisoners' Monitoring Centre.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.

Author: Faik Medjid

Source: CK correspondent