Strasbourg, 25.06.2012 – The co-rapporteurs for the monitoring of Azerbaijan by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Pedro Agramunt (Spain, EPP/CD) and Joseph Debono Grech (Malta, SOC), have welcomed the pardon by President Aliyev and release of nine of the eleven prisoners of conscience still detained since the March-April 2011 demonstrations in Baku.
The co-rapporteurs said this decision met their repeated calls, including during their last visit to Baku in mid-June 2012. Appreciating this as a sign of goodwill from President Aliyev, the co-rapporteurs stressed that the two persons still remaining in prison should also be immediately released.
“Our last visit earlier this month focused on the functioning of justice in Azerbaijan. We used it to draw the authorities’ attention to a number of concerns raised by international and national civil society,” said the co-rapporteurs.
“During our meetings with, among others, the Minister of Justice, the President of the Supreme Court, the Prosecutor General and the members of Parliament – notably the Chair of the Legal Affairs Committee – we discussed the legal framework, including the functioning of the Judicial Legal Council, the selection and appointment of judges and trial and appeal procedures,” they pointed out.
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“We also expressed our concern at the restrictive implementation of Article 221 of the Criminal Code, and we have submitted to the authorities lists of some cases in which complaints have been lodged, requesting full information on the state of investigation,” the co-rapporteurs concluded.
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