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Armenian military Footage releases video of burning Azerbaijani post

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burning Azerbaijani post

On the evening of June 30 and the morning of July 1, Azerbaijani forces attempted to carry out engineering work aimed at strengthening their positions near the Nakhijevan-Armenia border, a spokesman for the Armenian Defense Ministry said in a Facebook post.

According to Artsrun Hovhannisyan, the Armenian armed forces fired back and did not allow the rival to carry out the work.

“As a result of the fire of the Armenian side, one of the rival’s positions was completely destroyed and burnt down,” Hovhannisyan said.

“During the exchange of fire, contract serviceman of the Armenian Armed Forces Vahagn Baghdasaryan (b. 1974) received a minor injury.”

Below is a video of the burning Azerbaijani post, released by the Armenian Defense Ministry.

Artsrun Hvhannisyan’s Facebook post

Aliyev: Baku Wants Peaceful Resolution On Nagorno-Karabakh But ‘War Not Over’

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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev speaks at a military parade on June 26.

rferl.org BAKU — Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has talked tough at a military parade, calling the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region “primordially Azerbaijani territory” and saying Baku will never accept its “occupation.”

As he has in the past, the long-ruling Aliyev vowed on June 26 that Azerbaijan will “reinstate its control” over Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent territory that is also held by ethnic Armenian forces.

He spoke at a major military parade marking what the government considers the 100th anniversary of Azerbaijan’s armed forces.

“We are for the peaceful resolution of the [Nagorno-Karabakh] conflict but [Armenia] has to understand that there is no military or strategic object that the Azerbaijani Army is unable to destroy,” Aliyev said.

“The war is not over. Only its first phase has ended,” he said.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked for years in hostilities over disputed Nagorno-Karabakh, the Azerbaijani territory that was seized by Armenian-backed forces during a war that killed more than 30,000 people before a 1994 cease-fire.

Sporadic fighting continues and three decades of diplomatic efforts aimed at resolving the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, whose claim to independence have not been recognized by any country, have brought little progress.

Aliyev stressed that Baku will continue to buy weapons abroad to strengthen its armed forces, saying that “the factor of military potential currently dominates in the world affairs.”

“International law does not work, because if it did, we [would have] liberated our occupied territories long ago,” he said. “The war is not over. Only its first phase has ended.”

Some 4,000 military personnel took part in the parade and more than 70 aircraft and 240 pieces of military equipment, including Belarusian-made Polonez and Israeli-made LORA missiles, were on display.

Azerbaijani Teacher Fired After Call for Peace with Armenia

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Azerbaijani Teacher Fired After Call for Peace with Armenia

Azerbaijani Teacher Fired After Call for Peace with Armenia

“They said I am an Armenian agent, that I came to Azerbaijan to destroy this country under orders from Armenia.”

Lamiya Adilgizi

In late December, a group of men from a nationalist organization broke into a high school in Baku and accosted a teacher, who had become a social media sensation for posting a photo of one of his students dressed in traditional Armenian attire.

“They humiliated me in front of my students. They called me Armenian,” the teacher, Rovshan Azizov, told Eurasianet. “They said I am an Armenian agent, that I came to Azerbaijan to destroy this country under orders from Armenia. I just wanted to show that peace is possible, and that we cannot solve this conflict by killing each other, that’s all,” Azizov said.

Azizov said that school officials had pressured him even before the nationalists stormed the school. “They told me: ‘You better go. If you stay, you put our life and the life of kids in danger,” Azizov said. “Teachers told my students that I was Armenian and that they had to stay away from me.”

Days later, on December 28, Azizov was fired. School officials say it wasn’t because of his pro-Armenian positions, but his unorthodox teaching methods.

TO READ THE FULL STORY

Artsakh army shoots down Azerbaijani drone

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Azerbaijani drone

Azerbaijani drone

The Artsakh Defense Army shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) belonging to Azerbaijan’s military in the north-eastern (Talish) section of the Line of Contact.

The Azerbaijani drone launched to carry out a reconnaissance operation was shot down at around 6:30 p.m. local time on Monday, the Artsakh Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The ministry has also released photos of the downed aerial vehicle.

‘Trust No One’: Exiled Azerbaijani Reporter Says He’s Being Hunted In Kyiv

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Fikret Huseynli was stabbed, beaten, and left for dead by unknown assailants in Baku in 2006.

Fikret Huseynli was stabbed, beaten, and left for dead by unknown assailants in Baku in 2006.

Fikret Huseynli, a journalist who fled his homeland of Azerbaijan over a decade ago, says he got word early on March 5 that suspicious-looking men were trying to track him down in Kyiv.

Later that day, Huseynli told RFE/RL in a recent interview, four men whom he suspects were linked to the Azerbaijani security services turned up at the door of his rented apartment in the Ukrainian capital.

Claiming to be police and speaking both Ukrainian and Azeri, they told him they’d been sent to detain him and that he’d be extradited “within 48 hours” back to Azerbaijan, where Huseynli faces what he and supporters call trumped-up charges linked to his past reporting, much of it focusing on corruption at the highest echelons of power in the energy-rich Caucasus country.

“They tried to break down the door. They punched me, and I lost three teeth. With the help of others, I managed to close the door, and I escaped through the balcony,” Huseynli told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service in Kyiv on March 14.

Huseynli, a correspondent for the independent Azerbaijani online television channel Turan, has been stuck in the Ukrainian capital since October, when authorities stopped him from boarding a flight to Germany, seizing his documents under an Interpol red notice requested by Baku. He remains in legal limbo as Ukraine decides what to do with him.

International media watchdogs have urged Kyiv not to aid Baku in its efforts to track down critics beyond its borders, and to return Huseynli’s passport and other documents to him so he can return to the Netherlands, where he currently resides.

Ukrainian officials have been conspicuous in their silence, releasing few if any statements on Huseynli’s plight.

It’s not the first such case in Ukraine. An Uzbek journalist was detained at an airport in Kyiv in September on the basis of an Interpol red notice, an alert sent out to police worldwide notifying them about an arrest request from one of Interpol’s 192 member countries. Critics charge is often abused by repressive governments in order to pursue dissidents after they have fled abroad.

‘Lost Faith’ In Ukrainian System

Huseynli says that after the attack he headed for the the embassy of the Netherlands, the country that first granted him asylum, then citizenship, after he went into self-exile in 2008.

Along with human rights campaigners in Ukraine, staff at the embassy urged Huseynli to report what had happened with the police, advice he did not take.

“I don’t trust the police, the courts, no one. I’ve been in Ukraine for six months without any documents, completely helpless,” explains Huseynli.

Huseynli, describing himself as a “political hostage,” claims suspected security-service agents have been shadowing him in the Ukrainian capital.

“I continue to be watched. Some of them are Slavic looking, some are similar to Azeris. And these aren’t street thugs. I think they work for security services; maybe Azerbaijan’s, maybe Ukraine’s or Russia’s,” says Huseynli.

Huseynli has said elsewhere that on the day of the alleged attack, unidentified men approached him with an offer: report positively on the Azerbaijani government and negatively on the opposition. Do this, they allegedly said, and the extradition request is dropped. If you don’t, they warned, unclear repercussions would follow.

International press watchdogs have highlighted Huseynli’s predicament.

“We call on Ukrainian authorities to immediately return travel documents to Fikret Huseynli and allow him to leave Ukraine,” said CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova. “Kyiv must not be complicit with Azerbaijan authorities’ persecution of critics beyond its borders. We also call on Ukrainian police to investigate the March 5 physical attack on Huseynli, and bring the perpetrators to justice.”

Ukraine’s prosecutor-general did not respond to questions about the case from RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service.

Looking To Set Up A Bureau

Huseynli, the current head of the Amsterdam bureau of Turan, a Baku-based news agency that offers reporting in Azeri, Russia, and English on its website portal, arrived in Kyiv on October 7, 2017, to check out possibly opening a bureau in the Ukrainian capital.

Huseynli was about to board a flight to Dusseldorf at Boryspil International Airport on October 14 when he was arrested under a red notice issued by Interpol at the Azerbaijani government’s request. It accused him of “crossing a border illegally” and “fraud.”

Following his arrest, a Kyiv court ordered him held for 18 days pending examination of his appeal.

A Kyiv court on October 27 ordered the journalist’s release on bail but ruled that Huseynli should remain in Ukraine for two months while the Prosecutor-General’s Office investigated Azerbaijan’s extradition request, according to reports.

Ukrainian courts have twice extended the investigation term; the new deadline is March 20, 2018, according to the journalist.

“If I am killed or kidnapped or extradited to Azerbaijan in the near future, all responsibility lies with the Ukrainian authorities. What awaits me in Azerbaijan is a long prison term or death,” Huseynli wrote on his Facebook page on March 13.

New York Time 1990 article clearly says what the #Azerbaijani nationalism looked like, Slaughter of Sumgait Armenians

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Sumgait massacre

Sumgait massacre

Azerbaijan is no Lithuania. True, resurgent nationalism arouses people in the Caucasus just as it arouses the Baltic republics. But there the comparison ends – and the trouble for Moscow begins.

Nationalists in Lithuania are struggling to wrest independence from Moscow by nonviolent, political means. Nationalists in Azerbaijan also talk of independence, but their protest includes bloody pogroms against their Armenian neighbors. Nor do Azerbaijani nationalists limit their actions to Soviet Azerbaijan. They transgress the border with Iran to make common cause with Azerbaijanis there.

Mikhail Gorbachev seems prepared to bargain with Lithuania’s nationalists. But Azerbaijan’s violent nationalists leave him no choice but to send in the troops.

The nationalism now surging from Omsk to Tomsk is an understandable reaction to decades of forced assimilation. Stalin redrew borders, relocated populations and suppressed cultural and religious differences, all in the name of internationalism. But ancient national aspirations did not dis-appear.

This week’s massacre in Baku, of predominantly Christian Armenians by Muslim Azerbaijanis, shows nationalism at its nastiest. Generations of religious hatred erupted in spasmodic violence two years ago as armed Azerbaijanis rampaged through the town of Sumgait and slaughtered 32 people, mostly Armenians. After the 1988 earthquake that killed 25,000 Armenians, Azerbaijanis blocked railways to Armenia, holding up aid. Now the rivals vie for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave that Stalin incorporated into Azerbaijan in 1923.

The Armenians sought protection from Moscow. Mr. Gorbachev first resisted but renewed strife forced him to intervene. The Azerbaijanis added to his unease by declaring their interest in carving out a state on both sides of the national border. This was a clear threat to Iran’s territorial integrity and its warming relations with the Soviet Union. Teheran asked the Soviets to beef up border patrols.

Mr. Gorbachev and his reformist Kremlin allies are prepared to tolerate, even encourage, moderate nationalists who challenge central control and demand autonomy. But Moscow rightly feels that, in a polyglot country with 104 different nationalities, ethnic violence is beyond the pale.

Azerbaijan dramatizes Mr. Gorbachev’s larger dilemma. To generate economic thrust, he wants to shift power from Moscow’s stodgy bureaucracies to the regional republics. But how can he do this without unleashing nationalist hatreds and irredentism? The problem is illustrated by the struggle over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region as big as Long Island with a population of 160,000.

Putting either Azerbaijanis or Armenians in charge would leave one people at the mercy of the other. Moscow has to assume direct control. But that runs counter to Mr. Gorbachev’s desire for devolution. And the troops, once introduced, will be difficult to extricate. Nothing so challenges Mr. Gorbachev’s resourcefulness, and his fragile coalition of reformists and moderate nationalists, as the flow of blood in the Caucasus.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/19/opinion/nationalism-at-its-nastiest.html

Lawyer’s Tell-All Book On Azerbaijani Rights Activist Sparks Allegations Of Betrayal, Backstabbing

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Leyla Yunus (left), and her husband, Arif, now live in exile in the Netherlands. They were detained in April 2014 and subsequently handed harsh prison terms of 8 1/2 and 7 years in prison, respectively, on charges of fraud, tax evasion, and illegal business activities. The charges have been widely decried as bogus.

BAKU — The launch of Azerbaijani lawyer Elcin Qambarov’s tell-all book about a prominent former client, human rights activist Leyla Yunus, has sparked accusations of backstabbing, betrayal, and impropriety.

During the December 8 unveiling of The Splendor And Misery Of Leyla Yunus, Qambarov’s take on his time defending Yunus, the lawyer and a slate of speakers from parliament, along with other high-ranking state officials, took turns bashing the 62-year-old Yunus. They alleged that Yunus illegally funneled funds and called her a traitor who had been used as a “tool” against Azerbaijan by archenemy Armenia.

The accusations against Yunus, who lives with her husband in exile after being convicted in 2015 of economic crimes after a trial that the couple and international human rights groups denounced as a farce, have triggered a maelstrom over their treatment and place in the country’s history.

“She betrayed Azerbaijan,” parliamentarian Sahib Aliyev said at the book launch in the capital, Baku. “She betrayed all human rights activists and put them at risk.”

Chingiz Ganizade, another member of parliament who attended the event, accused Yunus of “receiving grants for conducting anti-Azerbaijani activity.”

Leyla, her husband, Arif, and their unregistered Peace and Democracy Institute defended victims of human rights abuses, from unlawful arrests to forced evictions, and encouraged peace-building between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The two neighbors fought a bloody and still-unresolved war between 1988 and 1994 over Azerbaijan’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The couple has also been investigated in Azerbaijan on charges of spying for Armenia. Leyla and Arif were detained in April 2014 and subsequently handed harsh prison terms of 8 1/2 and 7 years in prison, respectively, on charges of fraud, tax evasion, and illegal business activities. The charges have been widely decried as bogus.

Their trial sparked an international outcry, with rights groups branding it a travesty of justice and denouncing President Ilham Aliyev’s deepening campaign to muzzle dissent in the oil-rich Caucasus country. The United States singled out the Yunuses by name in a call for Baku to release them and other jailed dissidents, and EU lawmakers urged the freeing of all Azerbaijani political prisoners.

The couple was released on health grounds in late 2015 when their prison terms were replaced with suspended sentences. Both sustained permanent damage to their health as a result of the violence they endured in prison, they say. They were allowed to travel to the Netherlands in April 2016 to receive medical care and have lived there since.

Neither have commented publicly on the book, nor on the comments made at its launch, but many in the legal community have jumped to defend Leyla Yunus, accusing Qambarov of impropriety for revealing privileged information about a client.

“Elcin Qambarov should be expelled from the Bar Association as he has violated requirements of the Law on Lawyers and Lawyer Activities,” lawyer Yalcin Imanov told RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service. “But instead of this, we saw Qambarov appointed to its presidium. I’m astonished by this fact.”

Another lawyer, Elcin Sadigov, accused Qambarov of violating Article 7 of the Law on Lawyers and Lawyer Activities “by revealing information his client confided in him.”

For his part, Qambarov rejects the notion he has violated lawyers’ ethics, saying he wrote the book after his agreement with Yunus ended.

“I have no obligation to my client after a contract expires. Secondly, I’ve not disclosed any information concerning her private life. What I wrote is connected with social activity, her detention, and other issues. And it’s not me who launched this fight against Leyla Yunus. She herself started this. I had many, many troubles in defending her,” he told RFE/RL in an interview.

“It’s my personal fight and this book is my response to her,” he added. “She told everyone upon her release that Elcin Qambarov is the government’s man. Then why did she cling on me? Why did she hug and kiss me after she left prison?”

Written by Alan Crosby in Prague, based on reporting by RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/azerbaijan-leyla-arif-yunus-lawyer-book-allegations-betrayal-backstabbing/28914340.html?ltflags=mailer

European Parliament hosts public hearings on Azerbaijani Laundromat

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The European Parliament hosted on Tuesday public hearings in connection with the “Azerbaijani Laundromat” investigation of the international journalist.

The hearings organized by PANA committee – a committee on combating money laundering and tax evasion – were attended by members of the European parliament, journalists involved in investigation and human rights defenders.

Speaking during the hearings, member of the European Parliament Anna Gomes said the Azerbaijani regime has been doing reputation laundering which also reached the European Parliament. The result was the notorious election observation report of the European Parliament.

Head of Transparency International Carl Dolan added that corruption is systematically exported by the Azerbaijani authorities and undermines democracy in Europe.

Journalist of the Danish Berlingske newspaper Eva Jung noted that they had presented a list of European politicians who had been receiving money from Azerbaijan. She said they would  keep an eye on the Azerbaijani Laundromat and would try to find out more. There are still many politicians and renowned figures having ties to the Azerbaijani money laundering case, but they had not been identified yet. The journalists of the Danish newspaper said that what had been discovered in the case is only tip of the iceberg.

French court turns down Azerbaijani suit against France 2 reporters for calling the country a ‘dictatorship’

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The court in the Paris suburb of Nanterre dismissed on Tuesday the criminal defamation charges brought by Azerbaijani government against two French journalists for calling the country a “dictatorship.” In its November 7 ruling, the court dismissed the complaint for being ‘unacceptable.’ The hearing was the first case, involving a foreign government bringing a defamation suit against journalists before a French court.

To remind, Azerbaijan sued journalists Elise Lucet and Laurent Richard working for the France 2 network for defamation over a 2015 investigative report. The reporters were accused of defaming the Azerbaijani government by referring to it as a “dictatorship” when the former Soviet republic received a visit from then French president Francois Hollande.

The court decision was explained by references to the press law which “is designed to ensure the freedom of speech and prevent a state from launching a prosecution against individuals.”

The French Liberation paper quoted the court decision, saying “the press law has been put in place to prevent political censorship.”

The lawsuit against the two television journalists was earlier slammed by the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) as “an act of intimidation highlighting the Azerbaijani government’s contempt for free speech.” Media freedom activists also pointed to the dangerous precedent by a foreign government to export censorship beyond its own borders.

Angela Merkel’s CDU party received donations from “Azerbaijan Laundromat’ scandal” Video

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azerbaijan laundromat scandal

Illustration by gagrulenet azerbaijan laundromat scandal

Germany’s CDU party has received donations from a state-run Azerbaijani company, a German media consortium reported. The affair again highlights links between conservative politicians and the Central Asian dictatorship.

A district chapter of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party (CDU) received €28,000 ($33,114) from the state-run Azerbaijani oil and gas company Socar in contravention of German rules on party donations, a consortium of public broadcasters NDR, WDR and daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.

Read more: Azerbaijan laundromat scandal embroils ensnares German MP

The case again calls into question connections between certain conservative politicians and the South Caucasian republic, whose leader, President Ilham Aliyev, has by human rights organizations.

According to the report, two payments, one of €3,000 and one of €25,000, were deposited by Socar’s Germany-based branch on the account of the CDU’s district association in Frankfurt at the end of February 2012.

No fine for the CDU

The affair had caused a four-year-long legal dispute with the parliamentary administration authority behind the scenes, the report said, since German law prohibits parties from receiving donations from non-EU countries.

Aliyev: a stranger to democracy

‘Azerbaijan Laundromat’ scandal ensnares German MP

Although the district CDU branch accepted the donation without question, auditors at party headquarters in Berlin notified the Administration of the German Bundestag, which decided as early as autumn 2013 that the gift was not allowable under the law. The CDU then gave up the donation to be immediately impounded, the report said.

However, despite having broken the law, the party will not have to pay a fine, largely owing to a ruling made by an administrative court in April that self-denunciation in such cases can not only mitigate penalties, but even avert them altogether.

Mysterious links

The affair has raised several questions about links between the conservative CDU/CSU bloc and Azerbaijan, and what objectives the country could be pursuing with its donations.

The German CEO of Socar, Anders Egen Mamedov, was quoted by the paper as saying that the company’s contacts with political officials was taking place “against the backbround of the geopolitical importance of Azerbaijan and Socar,” including with regard to the pipeline network through seven countries that is currently under construction.

The massive gas pipeline project was chosen over the Nabucco-West pipeline in 2013 with the support of the then EU commissioner for energy, the German CDU politician Günther Oettinger.

Mamedov said Socar also made donations to sports and cultural associations in Germany. He declined to give details or speak about possible donations to other German of European parties to the paper.

Lobbying activities

The Süddeutsche also pointed to CDU parliamentarian Karin Strenz, who according to the paper did not disclose her work for an Azerbaijan-financed lobbying firm within three months as asked. The company is owned by former CSU politician Eduard Lintner, who has been doing lobbying work for Azerbaijan since 2009.

In another possible indication of her sympathies with the authoritarian country, in June 2015 Strenz voted against a resolution by the Council of Europe to call on Azerbaijan to release its political prisoners — the only German MP to do so, according to an earlier report in the paper.

Azerbaijan was described in a resolution by the European Parliament in September 2015 as “having suffered the greatest decline in democratic governance in all of Eurasia over the past 10 years.”