Four more activists have been charged in Azerbaijan over the receipt of grants. Ahmed Mammadzade has been remanded in custody, Aytaj Aghazade has been arrested in absentia, and Galib Bayramov and Nargiz Mukhtarova have been placed under police surveillance. The number of defendants in the case has reached 10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the summer of 2014, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Azerbaijan announced the initiation of criminal cases against a number of local NGOs, branches and representative offices of foreign NGOs for abuse of office and official forgery. In early August 2014, at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the bank accounts of six local and one international non-profit organization were frozen. According to activists, the accounts of more than 20 local and foreign NGOs have been frozen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Activist Aytaj Aghazade has been charged in an updated case against a number of Azerbaijani and foreign NGOs, the Abzas Media publication reported. A motion for her arrest in absentia has been filed with the court. Agazade is accused of receiving from the Marshall Fund in the form of an “unregistered grant” in the amount of 85 thousand manats (about 50 thousand US dollars). “Whether this information is reliable or not is unknown. Because the investigative body considers the funds received under service contracts as “illegal grant income,” Abzas Media notes. According to the publication, gender activist Nargiz Mukhtarova, head of the Center for Economic Relations Galib Bayramov and activist Akhmed Mammadzade have also been charged in the case. Mukhtarova and Bayramov have been placed under police supervision, and A. Mammadzade has been placed under arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A human rights activist, who did not want to publish his name, confirmed the information to Abzas Media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The number of defendants in the updated case has reached 10, including five people under arrest, one under house arrest, two under police supervision and two arrested in absentia and put on the wanted list. Cases have been opened against Aytaj Aghazade and Nargiz Mukhtarova. Since Aytaj is outside of Azerbaijan, she was arrested in absentia, and Nargiz was placed “under police supervision.” She was brought in as an accused despite the fact that she has a baby and her husband Farid Mehralizade is under arrest in the Abzas Media case. “Family repression” seems to be becoming a trend, since the head of the Center for Economic Research Galib Bayramov, the brother of the famous economist Gubad Ibadoglu, who is also still under investigation and is now also under police supervision after a nine-month arrest, was brought in as an accused and transferred to police supervision. Activist Ahmed Mammadzade was placed under arrest. All defendants in the case are accused of official and economic crimes, including “official forgery”, “abuse of office”, “legalization of illegally obtained funds”. However, they were the heads of public associations, and they cannot be considered officials. These people carried out their activities legally through service contracts and paid taxes. This cannot be considered “legalization of criminal proceeds”. The funds were of legal origin from authoritative international donor organizations and even such structures as the UN,” the human rights activist said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The source did not rule out that the number of defendants in the case will grow. “The investigation is calling in all those who had any cooperation with Western donors, and especially with USAID,” he emphasized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The defendants in the case who are at large declined to comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Four more activists have been charged in Azerbaijan over the receipt of grants. Ahmed Mammadzade has been remanded in custody, Aytaj Aghazade has been arrested in absentia, and Galib Bayramov and Nargiz Mukhtarova have been placed under police surveillance. The number of defendants in the case has reached 10. In the summer of 2014, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":30300,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1047],"class_list":["post-30299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-feed","tag-editor"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30299","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=30299"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30324,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30299\/revisions\/30324"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}