[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The Azerbaijani Talysh Public Council (ATPC) has condemned the sentence of 4 years of imprisonment of activist Ruslan Vahabov in a drug case.<\/p>\n
The sentence was handed down on 12 January by the judiciary of the Baku Court of Grave Crimes.<\/p>\n
The ATPC believes that Vahabov is being prosecuted on trumped-up charges, as no credible evidence of Vahabov’s guilt was presented. The entire prosecution was based on police allegations while the investigation did not establish the origin of the drugs.<\/p>\n
The ATPC holds that the real reason for Vahabov’s arrest is his criticism of the Azerbaijani authorities in social networks, and calls for his immediate release.<\/p>\n
The lawyer of the convicted Agshin Kerimov noted that Vahabov was initially arrested under Article 234.4.3 (drug trafficking on a large scale) of the Criminal Code (5 to 12 years of imprisonment).<\/p>\n
However, during the court investigation, the charge was re-classified to the milder Article 234.1.1 (Illegal acquisition, storage without intent to sell narcotic drugs in large quantities), which provides for a sentence of 3 to 8 years.<\/p>\n
According to Kerimov, Vakhabov does not plead guilty, and the defence will appeal the verdict in the appeal instance and ask for acquittal. Vakhabov was detained in September this year.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The Azerbaijani Talysh Public Council (ATPC) has condemned the sentence of 4 years of imprisonment of activist Ruslan Vahabov in a drug case. The sentence was handed down on 12 January by the judiciary of the Baku Court of Grave Crimes. The ATPC believes that Vahabov is being prosecuted on trumped-up charges, as no credible […]<\/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-27334","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\/27334","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=27334"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27341,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27334\/revisions\/27341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}