Azerbaijan confirms Lieutenant-Colonel’s death

April 19, 2016 By administrator

210604 Lieutenant-Colonel of Azerbaijani Armed Forces Sanan Tahir oglu Akhundov died “as a result of violation of safety rules,” the Defense Ministry said Tuesday, April 19.

Some social media users had been previously circulating the news on the top military officer’s death, listing him among the fatalities that the Azerbaijani authorities so diligently hide.

Social media users regularly report on Azerbaijani soldiers killed in the course of military clashes with Nagorno Karabakh, revealing their names, family names and other data, thus causing great dissatisfaction in Baku.

According to the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry, however, the Lieutenant-Colonel died “as a result of violation of safety rules,” and not on the contact line between Azerbaijan and Karabakh.

Karabakh Update: Baku confirms death of Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel

April 11, 2016 By administrator

Baku confirmed the death of a Lieutenant Colonel from the Azeri Special Forces, Haqqin.az reports.

Baku’s attempts to conceal the number of fighters killed in the course of clashes between Karabakh and Azerbaijan since April 2 proved ineffective.

According to Azerbaijani media outlets, the body of Murad Telman oğlu Mirzayev, who was killed in recent clashes with Karabakh, will be transported to Baku by helicopter.

Mirzayev was reportedly killed “in a special combat mission.”

The parties to the Karabakh conflict agreed on a bilateral ceasefire along the contact line which came into force at midday, April 5.

Prior to that, on the night of April 1-2, Azerbaijani armed forces initiated overt offensive operations in the southern, southeastern and northeastern directions of the line of contact with Nagorno Karabakh.

As of April 5, the Azerbaijani side has lost 26 tanks and 4 infantry fighting vehicles, as well as 1 BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher, 1 engineering vehicle, 2 military helicopters and 14 unmanned aerial vehicles. The Azerbaijani side has admitted the loss of 31 fighters, 1 helicopter and 1 unmanned drone, whereas the Armenian side’s photo and video materials show dozens of killed Azerbaijani troops, 1 helicopter and 3 UAVs. Opposition media outlets, however, reported on the death of 93 Azerbaijani soldiers, stating that 33 more have been wounded. According to Karabakh authorities, 300 Azerbaijani soldiers were killed in clashes.

14 Karabakh tanks have been neutralized since April 2.

Related links:

http://haqqin.az/news/67762

PARIS Confirmation of the death of Lola Ouzounian in the attack at the Bataclan

November 18, 2015 By administrator

Three days after the terrorist attacks that hit Paris, relatives of Lola Ouzounian formalized the death of this young girl of 17, who was at the Bataclan Friday, November 13 evening. Parisian schoolgirl, described as sweet and discreet, came to the concert of the Eagles of Death Metal with his father, journalist and professor at the ISCPA Eric Ouzounian, who survived.

It is the latter which confirmed the news on social networks, which have rallied in recent days to find her. Eric Ouzounian wrote: “Two senior police officers leave home and come to tell me with absolute certainty that the body was identified Lola. Let us remember that education, humanism, culture, are the best tools against barbarism. “

Azeri Journalist Writing for Armenian Newspaper Receives Death Threats, Forced to Live Abroad

November 5, 2015 By administrator

BY VERA TAN
FROM GLOBAL JOURNALIST

Azerbaijan-born journalist and blogger Arzu Geybullayeva has written for major news outlets like Foreign Policy and al-Jazeera. Yet it’s her work for Agos, a Turkish-Armenian newspaper, that has led to threats from her native land.

Azerbaijan and neighboring Armenia do not have diplomatic relations. The former Soviet republics have fought periodic border skirmishes since a 1994 ceasefire suspended a war over Nagorno-Karabakh, a Rhode Island-sized enclave within Azeri borders that is populated mainly by ethnic Armenians.

For the Istanbul-based Geybullayeva, the criticism of her work for Agos began with small Azeri outlets, and spread to Azerbaijan’s state-owned media. Eventually Geybullayeva, who frequently blogs about human rights in Azerbaijan, received death threats online. By 2014 she realized it was no longer safe for her to return to her home country.

That year the Azeri government of President Ilham Aliyev unleashed a crackdown on the media. Among other incidents, the government arrested Khadija Ismayilova, an Azeri journalist who investigated corruption in Aliyev’s family. Ilgar Nasibov, a journalist and human rights activist, was beaten unconscious in what his wife told local media was likely an attack by Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry.

Among the tactics the Azeri government has used against Geybullayeva is to apply pressure to her family in Azerbaijan, a strategy it has used againstother journalists and dissidents. Geybullayeva, 32, spoke with Global Journalist’s Vera Tan about press freedom in Azerbaijan and why she continues to write despite the risks.

Global Journalist: How did you know you wouldn’t be able to return to Azerbaijan safely?

Geybullayeva: I started to get mentioned in the news a lot more than I should have been mentioned. I was mostly labeled as a traitor because of my work [writing about] , and also because of my work with Agos.

Global Journalist: When did you start fearing for your life?

Geybullayeva: It was October [2014] when I received my first death threat – he told me [online] about the number of days I had left, he told me the exact location I’d be buried. I obviously realized that going home was out of the question because when you’re labeled a traitor, it’s quite a serious accusation…You realize that once you get labeled and such, it’s not really safe to go back, especially when a lot of people were ending up in prison at the time.

GJ: How long did the threats continue?

Geybullayeva: To be honest with you, some of them I stopped reading. It got to me, psychologically. And to me, what really pissed me off was when it went from being against me to against my family. People started calling my mom a whore, people started calling my father a traitor. When someone calls you a whore or a bitch, or imagines the many ways that want to rape you, that’s one thing, but when this imagination extends to your parents and the things that they imagine doing to your mother, for instance, I really think that’s borderline. At least it was for me.

GJ: Your brother has been threatened due to your work. How has that made you feel?

Geybullayeva: I try not to blame myself for the pressure and the stuff that he had to go through… But of course I do feel the responsibility… I so very clearly remember our conversation when – this was last summer – he called me yet again, and he was yelling on the phone, telling me how sick and tired he is of my writing and my work and then he told me that I should publicly apologize for my mistakes. He called my work a mistake… And it got to me.

But after that, I thought, no. I’m not going to write anything anywhere and to apologize for anything because I haven’t done anything wrong. And if it really does bother him, then I decided to tell him that he should disown me, that he should publicly disown me… And I think that sort of pushed his boundaries to actually realize that I am actually family.

GJ: How is it to live in Turkey knowing you can’t go back to Azerbaijan?

Geybullayeva: You really start understanding what freedom really is and what it really means in various circumstances. It makes me feel really sad because I cannot travel back to Azerbaijan, because I cannot visit my father’s grave, and I can’t visit my friends, but it definitely gives me the space and opportunity to do the work that I do.

GJ: Why do you still continue the work that you do?

Geybullayeva: I’ve always felt privileged. I’ve had the comfort of life that not everyone in Azerbaijan had… and I feel like I’m returning a favor to my upbringing by trying to tell the stories of those who did not or do not or will not have the same privileges… I sometimes wonder if it actually is making a difference, because to me it’s sometimes feels like it’s actually making matters worse, and more people get arrested, but then I also realize that if we keep silent then it’s even worse.

Already I see that people don’t know much about Azerbaijan. That is despite all the advancing that’s taking place in the sidelines, so what if people like me shut up? What if we stop doing the work that we do? Then what? I think that would not be me doing justice to my peers back home. Because I owe them at least a fight.

Turkey 12 Turkish police officers charged in the death of US woman at Istanbul airport

September 4, 2015 By administrator

ISTANBUL – Doğan News Agency

A U.S. citizen who died after an altercation with police at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport in 2013 has been seen gasping for air as police officers forcibly held her to the ground in surveillance camera footage of the incident.
Tracey Lynn Brown, 48, arrived in April 2013 at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport from the Uzbek capital Tashkent to transfer to a Chicago-bound Turkish Airlines plane and waited for 13 hours in the international arrivals terminal.

According to camera footage, she entered a room belonging to the passport check bureau and had a quarrel with police officers before being removed from the room.

In their previous testimonies, the police officers had said Brown constantly asked about her daughter and was aggressive, refusing to make contact.

About six minutes later, Brown was seen again storming the room. According to the police officers’ claims, she scattered computers and documents inside.

Brown later wounded one of the police officers with a pair of scissors, according to the indictment. She was handcuffed and then taken to a preview and transfer room, the video showed.

Police officers handcuffed Brown to a chair but she was able to release herself. In response, seven police officers forced Brown to the ground face down and handcuffed her from behind. They were seen putting pressure on Brown’s back, feet and hands with their knees for about 17 minutes.

The police officers also called a doctor in the airport identified as Mesut Ö., but he was not seen making any contact with Brown. According to the indictment and the report, he ordered the medical team to inject Brown with anodyne. Mesut Ö. and the medical team then left the room about four minutes later, however they came back later when a police officer realized that Brown did not have pulse. Mesut Ö. was seen performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Brown for about seven minutes. She was later transferred to a hospital.

Brown was transferred to another hospital on the same day and spent ten days in the intensive care unit at another hospital, where she died on April 18, 2013.

The three reports requested by the Bakırköy Public Prosecutor’s Office concluded there was a casual relation between the actions of the police officers and Brown’s death.

“The cause of death was the pressure on her chest and neck area for an extended amount of time,” the report stated, adding that Brown was unconscious for 13 days.

The first two reports meanwhile did not mention any accusations against Mesut Ö., but in the most recent report issued in 2014, he was impeached for not having contact with the patient or treating her firsthand, which does not comply with medical rules.

Following the investigation, the Bakırköy Public Prosecutor’s Office filed a lawsuit against 12 police officers and Mesut Ö. on the grounds of death by excessive force and demanded imprisonment from 12 years to 16 for the police officers and from two years to six years for the doctor.

Meanwhile, the police officers defended during both their investigation and trial testimonies that they had been within their right to use force and within their legal boundaries, denying the accusations. They added Brown had suddenly entered the room and showed aggressive behavior. They also said Brown had scissors in her hand during the second altercation and attacked randomly, wounding one police officer in his hand.

The next trial of the incident is scheduled to be held in October.

Source: hurriyetdailynews.com

Ousted Egypt President Mohammed Morsi sentenced to death

May 16, 2015 By administrator

Egypt’s ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi has been sentenced to death on charges of jailbreak. Morsi’s case will now be referred to a religious authority before an execution can take place.

An Egyptian court sentenced the country’s former president, and more than 100 other defendants, to death on Saturday over a mass prison escape during the 2011 uprising that toppled then President Hosni Mubarak.

Morsi sat through the reading of Judge Shaaban el-Shami’s verdict in a caged dock.

Many of the other defendants were tried in absentia, including prominent Islamic cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi who lives in Qatar.

Supporters of the ousted president chanted “down, down with military rule” as el-Shami read his verdict in the packed courtroom, a converted lecture theater in the national police academy in an eastern suburb of Cairo.

As is customary in decisions resulting in capital punishment, the case will now be referred to the country’s top religious authority, the Grand Mufti, for opinion before any execution can occur. His decision at the June 2 hearing is non-binding.

‘Political verdict’

An official from Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood party, Amr Darrag, condemned the decision and called on the international community to take action.

“This is a political verdict and represents a murder crime that is about to be committed, and it should be stopped by the international community,” Darrag, co-founder of the now defunct Freedom and Justice Party, a political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, told the Reuters news agency.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed the death sentence decision, saying, “the popularly-elected president of Egypt…has unfortunately been sentenced to death. Egypt is turning back into ancient Egypt.” Speaking at a political rally in Istanbul, Erdogan further accused the West of “turning a blind eye” to the 2013 coup.

Prosecutors allege armed members of the Palestinian Hamas group entered Egypt during the 18-day revolt through illegal tunnels under Gaza’s border with Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The militants then fought their way into several jails, releasing Morsi along with more than 30 other Muslim Brotherhood leaders and 20,000 inmates.

Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president was ousted in 2013 by the military following days of street protests demanding his removal. The president’s overthrow triggered a government crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Hundreds of movement members have died and thousands have been imprisoned following now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s banning of the group. Al-Sisi was the military chief at the time Morsi was overthrown and led the coup.

Morsi was sentenced last month to 20 years in prison for inciting violence against protestors in 2012 when he was the country’s president. Rights group, Amnesty International called the verdict a “travesty of justice.”

Even if the mufti confirms Morsi’s death sentence, he can still appeal the verdict.

jlw/bw (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)

BREAKING NEWS Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Gets Death Penalty in Boston Bombing

May 15, 2015 By administrator

A federal jury on Friday condemned Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a failed college student, to death for setting off bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured hundreds more in the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001.
The jury of seven women and five men, which last month convicted Mr. Tsarnaev, 21, of all 30 charges against him, 17 of which carry the death penalty, took more than 14 hours to reach its decision.

Kobane’s streets of death: Executed ISIS fighters are lined up

January 30, 2015 By administrator

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

By SIMON TOMLINSON FOR MAILONLINE

Kurdish fighters have killed dozens of Islamic State militants in recent days as battles continue to rage around the strategic Syrian border town of Kobane.

In one village, a Kurd was today pictured standing over the bodies of Islamic extremists after they were killed in Halimce, a village east of the town.

Around 20 jihadists also died in the hills west of Kobane days after it was recaptured following months of heavy fighting which has left the town in ruins.

Kurdish forces retook the town on January 26 in a symbolic blow to the jihadists who have seized large swathes of territory in their onslaught across Syria and Iraq.

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman said: ‘Nineteen ISIS members were killed in fighting against the (Kurdish) People’s Protection Units (YPG) in the hills surrounding Manaz to the west of Kobane.

‘Another three jihadists died in fighting around villages to the east of Kobane, while the YPG also took one ISIS member prisoner,’ he told AFP.

The YPG had also recaptured five villages around Kobane this week, according to Mr Rahman, whose Britain-based group relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

Death toll from Syria conflict surpasses 200,000: Report

December 2, 2014 By administrator

A human rights monitoring group has said that the death toll from the nearly four-year-long foreign-sponsored militancy in Syria has now gone beyond 200,000 mark.

Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said on Tuesday that his agency has documented the killing of 202,354 people since March 2011.

“Of the total, 63,074 of the killed were civilians, including 10,377 children,” he added.

Abdel Rahman stated that more than 130,000 foreign-backed militants, including 37,324 Syrian nationals, have also lost their lives in the Syrian conflict, while a total of 76,223 Syrian army troopers and pro-government fighters have been also killed in the fighting.

The group noted that the toll “is probably much higher than 200,000” since fatalities in some remote areas have not been reported.

On Monday, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) announced in a statement that it has suspended providing food vouchers for more than 1.7 million Syrian refugees due to lack of funds.

The UN agency said it has cut the program which provides Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt with electronic vouchers to buy food in local shops.

The WFP added that it needs USD 64 million to support the Syrian refugees in December only.

Syria has been grappling with a deadly crisis since March 2011. Western powers and some of their regional allies — especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — are reportedly supporting the militants.

Death toll from Turkey clashes rises to 37

October 11, 2014 By administrator

The death toll from clashes between Turkish police and pro-Kurdish protesters across the country has risen to 37.

Speaking to reporters in the capital Ankara on Friday, Interior Minister Efkan Ala said 31 people were killed and 351 others injured in the protests that resumed for the fourth consecutive day in various cities, the Hurriyet Daily News reported.

“This spiral of violence should immediately be stopped,” Ala said, adding, “Everyone should do their part to put an end to these incidents. We should all stand in solidarity with each other.”

Over 1,000 protesters have been detained in 35 provinces, he noted.

Hours later, Turkish news agencies reported that six more injured people, including two police officers, died in hospitals.

Police used tear gas and plastic bullets to disperse the protesters who were trying to march to Istanbul’s Taksim Square on Friday. Several people were detained in the crackdown.

The protesters are outraged at the Turkish government for its stance on the ongoing fighting in Syria’s Kurdish town of Kobane.

They accuse Ankara of inaction over the crimes committed by the ISIL Takfiri terrorists by preventing Turkish Kurds to join Kobane’s citizens in their fight against the militants.

The ISIL terror group launched its assault on Kobane three weeks ago, forcing 200,000 mainly Kurdish residents to flee into neighboring Turkey.

The terrorists have committed widespread acts of violence, including mass executions, abductions, torture and forcing women into slavery in the areas they have seized in Iraq and Syria.