On 4 December 2024, Aytan Farhadova in OC media reported that human rights defender Rufat Safarov was detained in Azerbaijan a week before he was set to be awarded the Human Rights Defender of the Year award by US State Secretary Antony Blinken. That day, Safarov’s lawyer, Elchin Sadigov, posted on Facebook that Safarov was accused of hooliganism and fraud resulting in major damage.
Sadigov later posted a message written by Safarov, in which he explained that he was planning to visit the US two days after receiving his visa in order to accept the Global Human Rights Defender Award from Blinken. [not totally clear which award is referred to – ed]
‘So I was awarded as a strong human rights defender of the year. Because the United States initially nominated me, I express my deep gratitude to [Mark] Libby, the US Ambassador in Azerbaijan, and Mr Blinken, US Secretary of State, who supported my candidacy.’
State Department’s Deputy Spokesperson, Vedant Patel, during a press briefing on Tuesday, said: We’re deeply concerned by reports that human rights defender Rufat Safarov has been detained in Azerbaijan’, Patel said, adding that they were ‘closely monitoring the case.’
Frank Schwabe, the head of the German delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), criticised Safaravo’s arrest, saying that PACE will ‘respond to this in January’.
Safarov, a former prosecutor’s office official who spoke out against human rights abuses by the government, was sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of bribery, fraud, and human rights violations in 2016. He was released from prison alongside almost 400 others after Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev issued an amnesty to mark Novruz in 2019.
Tags: Azerbaijan, detentiion, detention, human rights, Human rights defender, Human Rights Defenders, news, politics, Prosecutor, Rufat Safarov, State department, travel ban
