{"id":25499,"date":"2023-02-14T10:26:22","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T10:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/?p=25499"},"modified":"2023-02-14T10:26:26","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T10:26:26","slug":"key-u-s-senators-call-for-release-of-bakhtiyar-hajiyev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/news-feed\/key-u-s-senators-call-for-release-of-bakhtiyar-hajiyev\/","title":{"rendered":"Key U.S. Senators Call For Release Of Bakhtiyar Hajiyev"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Key U.S. senators called on Monday urged Azerbaijan to release leading activist Bakhtiyar Hajiyev and other political prisoners immediately, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ralakbar?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">TURAN&#8217;s Washington correspondent <\/a>reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;I continue to believe Azerbaijan\u2019s future should be in the community of democracies, but the detention of political prisoners, such as activist Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, undermines that path,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.durbin.senate.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Senator Dick Durbin<\/a>, the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Azerbaijan should release Hajiyev and other political prisoners immediately,&#8221; Durbin said in a tweet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cardin.senate.gov\/\">Senator Ben Cardin,<\/a> co-chair of the Helsinki Commission, also called on the Azerbaijani government to immediately release Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, &#8220;who has been unjustly detained on false pretenses since December,&#8221; as he put it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;We can and will hold accountable all those who seek to undermine human rights,&#8221; Cardin noted in a separate tweet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hajiyev was arrested on Dec 9 for alleged \u201chooliganism\u201d and \u201cdisrespect for court\u201d, claims that he strongly rejects and started a hunger strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Senators&#8217; tweets come after the State Department on Saturday renewed its call for Hajiyev\u2019s expeditious release, noting that the activist has been suffering from a severe deterioration in his health and risks going into a coma, citing an independent physician.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Later on the weekend, the Department posted the following via its Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Bureau Twitter account:&nbsp; &#8220;We urge Azerbaijani authorities to immediately release human rights defenders Bakhtiyar Hajiyev and Elchin Mammad &#8211; and all those incarcerated for exercising fundamental freedoms &#8211; and to lift the house arrest and charges against Elchin Sadygov&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Alex Raufoglu<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Key U.S. senators called on Monday urged Azerbaijan to release leading activist Bakhtiyar Hajiyev and other political prisoners immediately, TURAN&#8217;s Washington correspondent reports. &#8220;I continue to believe Azerbaijan\u2019s future should be in the community of democracies, but the detention of political prisoners, such as activist Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, undermines that path,&#8221; Senator Dick Durbin, the second-highest-ranking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-feed"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25500,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25499\/revisions\/25500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}