Azeri Lifers Demand Sentence Review

A group of Azerbaijani prisoners caught in legal limbo after their country abolished the death penalty are close to winning their fight to have their sentences reviewed.

The prisoners had all received death sentences for serious crimes – mainly murder, but also treason – but were reprieved when Azerbaijan abolished capital punishment in 1998 as it took steps to join the Council of Europe. They are all now in the country’s harshest jail at Gobustan, 40 kilometres south of the capital Baku.

The end to the death penalty directly affected 128 prisoners whose sentences were automatically commuted to life terms. However, at that point in 1998, Azerbaijan’s criminal code lacked a definition of what life imprisonment actually meant.

Lawyers for the convicts argued that they should logically serve 15 years, the second gravest sentence set out in the code. But no decision was taken, meaning the men were effectively left to serve indefinite sentences.

Conditions in Azerbaijani jails – and in particular the scourge of tuberculosis – have been so bad that according to leading Azerbaijani human rights defender Eldar Zeynalov, 32 of the 128 have died in the last seven years. Following a riot earlier this year, the authorities have made steps to improve prison conditions. (See “Azerbaijan Prison Crackdown”, CRS No. 275, February 24, 2005)

However they still live in cramped conditions with no leisure facilities and very limited contact with relatives.

Zeynalov characterised 19 of the remaining lifers as political prisoners.

Over the last three months the Gobustan inmates have staged two hunger strikes, demanding that their sentences be fixed at 15 years. The first strike began on June 26 and lasted 12 days, ending after the country’s human rights ombudsman Elmira Suleimanova promised to raise the issue in the Constitutional Court.

With no sign that this was happening, 87 prisoners launched another hunger strike on August 1.

This time, the Constitutional Court reacted immediately and ruled that as the original death penalties had been overturned, the prisoners should have their sentences reviewed by regional-level courts.

On August 5, Zeynalov and Zalikha Tagirova, the heads of the Human Rights Centre of Azerbaijan, visited Gobustan and persuaded most of the hunger-strikers to call off their protest, offering them help with fighting their cases in court.

“We explained that there was no longer any need for a hunger strike, the decision of the court would be enough for them,” said Zeynalov. “We explained how they could use this court decision. We met one prisoner, a professional lawyer, who undertook to prepare a model appeal to the Garadag regional court. We can say that the hunger strike is over.”

However a source in Gobustan jail, who asked to remain anonymous, told IWPR that 19 of the 87 hunger strikers are continuing their protest and do not accept the Constitutional Court’s ruling. The source said that the health of the hunger strikers had deteriorated significantly.

The prison administration denies this allegation. “Only one prisoner, Mehman Muradov, is continuing the hunger strike, and his state of health is not causing us serious concern,” prison governor Lieutenant-Colonel Sadaget Agayev told IWPR.

Some of those previously sentenced to death on political grounds have been freed under a presidential amnesty. They include former defence minister Rahim Gaziev, who was given a death sentence in 1995 but was freed earlier this year.

“Seventy of us ‘death-row prisoners’ began a hunger strike in March 2002,” Gaziev recalled in an interview. “The authorities did not want to hear about our problems and didn’t accept our statements. The prison administration brutally suppressed our protest and used various physical and psychological methods to force the prisoners to take food. My cellmates and I still feel the effects of this torture.”

This time, the authorities are being more circumspect. Azerbaijan’s defence minister Fikret Mamedov told a press conference that the prison authorities had the right to force-feed the strikers but would not be doing so.

Khuraman Muradova, sister of hunger-striker Mehman Muradov, confirmed that the prison authorities’ treatment had improved.

“The new prison boss is a good man and there are no problems in the prison now,” she said. “But they did not allow us any visits after the hunger strike began. By law we are allowed four visits a year. I spoke to my brother on the phone and he said there was no reason to worry.”

Lawyer Fuad Agayev said he believed that though many of the Gobustan lifers had committed serious crimes, many of them should by rights have been released by now. He said he was unhappy with the Constitutional Court’s decision.

“It is not a solution to the problem, but more of a bureaucratic manoeuvre,” said Agayev. “The regional courts don’t have the powers to resolve these kind of legal cases.”

Idrak Abbasov is a correspondent for the Aina-Zerkalo newspaper in Baku.