Lawyers disallowed visits to jailed Azerbaijani human rights defender

PanARMENIAN.Net - Lawyers of arrested human rights defender Leyla Yunus, Khalid Bagirov, Fariz Namazly, Javad Javadov and Alaif Hasanov, issued a joint statement to the press, Contact.az reported.

According to the statement, on September 22, Khalid Bagirov tried to pay another visit to his client in the jail of Kurdakhani. However, the guards told him that Yunus is sick and refuses to see the lawyer. Afterwards, the lawyer was denied a chance to talk to her on the phone.

Taking into account the refusal and conditions in which Leyla Yunus is kept, lawyers are seriously concerned with her state.

"We urge relevant authorities for immediate intervention to allow meetings with lawyers," the statement reads.

Azerbaijan, whose president since 2003 Ilham Aliyev is the son of the energy rich country's long-time strongman under Soviet rule, is accused by human rights campaigners of persecuting opponents and suppressing dissent. Its leaders are courted by Western countries and their energy firms as an alternative to Russia in supplying oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe. The Azerbaijani government denies it violates human rights accords.

In August, Amnesty International said rights activists seized in a new wave of arrests had fallen victim to tough new laws strictly limiting the operations of civil society groups campaigning for freedom of expression.