Fazil Mustafa

Recently the Council of Europe secretary general, Thorbjorn Jagland, and the German and Norwegian embassies issued strong statements against the Azerbaijani government regarding the court decision on the imprisonment of two young activists. What do you think of these statements?

I advocate approaching these issues not from the political, but from the legal aspect. I think any court decision cannot satisfy all parties for subjective and objective reasons, and they can express their concern in a sensitive fashion. But in any case, the most important issue in the correction of any decision is to exhaust the legal avenues. We have seen that when problems are solved not in a legal fashion but under foreign political pressure, this can cause undesirable results.

I think the father of one of the young activists – the honourable Hikmet Hajizade – has a more refined position on the issue. He told journalists that they are going to move to the next legal phase – the appeals procedure.

We also can assist the solution of the problem as members of parliament. My principled position is that it was not positive that the embassies or Council of Europe secretary general issued statements putting pressure on Azerbaijan. This is not the only question. It can become a habit for them to interfere in the internal affairs of Azerbaijan over other issues, for example, over the Armenians or something else, which can seriously damage our national interests. One person is in jail in Germany, Croatia and Finland and two in the United Kingdom. How would the governments of those countries take it if Azerbaijani embassies demanded the protection of their rights or that they be considered political prisoners?

In any case, foreign embassies have to give a legal assessment of a court decision and not underline the political motivation. It damages their diplomatic missions. Previous experience shows that political pressure from embassies leads to an extension in the term of imprisonment. It would be more productive if they investigated opportunities for their release together with the country’s law-enforcement organizations.

The Council of Europe secretary general connected the imprisonment of the two young activists with a satirical clip they released criticizing the government. Does the statement have any legal foundation?

I don’t know what video clip is being referred to here. But from the legal point of view, it is important for the secretary general to see the indictment that formed the basis of the court's decision. If they quote some probabilities out of the indictment, they have to show sources. The Council of Europe secretary general can claim the court decision was unfair and that there were violations of procedure, but it was not correct for him to say anything specific about other motivations for the charges. As far as I know, there were no such claims or charges in the indictment.

International organizations frequently address the problem of political prisoners in Azerbaijan and after the last trial the German embassy condemned Azerbaijan for "creating two more political prisoners". As a lawyer, what is your opinion about the notion of a "political prisoner"?

The notion of "enemy of the people" was so widespread in Soviet times that society called anyone jailed without a court decision or any other motivation "enemies of the people". This can now apply to the term “political prisoner”, which is used for rebels or domestic criminals. I don’t support cases where the term “political prisoner” is used without recourse to the law.  Such statements by a European country that urges the supremacy of the law could lead to disputes.

Azerbaijan is integrated into the mechanism of the European Court and accusations made outside this mechanism can only be assumptions which have no legal force. It is impossible to predict how the European Court, or the closer Appeal Court, will react to the decision of the court of first instance. If someone is called a "political prisoner", this can be decided only by the European Court. In any case, it is not decided by foreign embassies, but by the higher courts. The European Court has not used this phrase to describe anyone yet. I would like to emphasize that it would be better to follow the legal trail to the end, to unite the efforts of human rights defenders and the public instead of directing the issue towards political deadlock.

APA