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Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs
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Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs
Azerbaijani president recalls ambassadors, consuls from several countries
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree Nov. 25 recalling Elkhan Gahramanov from the position of the country’s ambassador in the United Arab Emirates.
Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile and Uruguay Mammad Ahmadzadeh, and ambassador in Estonia Tofig Zulfugarov were recalled as well.
The president also decreed to recall the country’s ambassador to Turkmenistan Vahdat Sultanzadeh and ambassador to Kazakhstan Zakir Hashimov.
By another decree, the president recalled Murad Najafbayli from the position of Azerbaijan’s permanent representative in the UN Office and other international organizations at Geneva.
President Aliyev also signed a decree recalling Hasan Zeynalov from the post of Consul General in Istanbul and Rashad Mammadov from the post of Consul General in the Kazakh city of Aktau.
Millions misappropriated by Azerbaijani National Security Ministry’s former officials
As many as 57 people have been recognized victims as part of an investigation into criminal acts of former officials of Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry, Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s Office told Trend Nov. 25.
The damage inflicted to the victims is estimated at tens of millions of manats, added the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Earlier, the Grave Crimes Investigation Department at the Prosecutor General’s Office conducted an investigation on the basis of numerous complaints addressed by entrepreneurs and individuals to the Azerbaijani presidential administration and public prosecution bodies.
The investigation collected sufficient evidence about the abuse and excess of powers by a number of heads of departments and divisions, as well as other employees of the Ministry of National Security.
Following the investigation, 21 people have been held accountable for the revealed criminal acts, in line with Azerbaijan’s Criminal Code.
Arrest was chosen as a restraint measure against 19 of them, while recognizance not to leave was chosen as a restrictive measure against one person.
Another person, who avoided investigation, was put on wanted list, with further arrest as a measure of restraint.
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Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs
Deciphering Azerbaijan's Secret Service Purge
By Afgan Mukhtarli
Nov. 26, 2015
[Afgan Mukhtarli is an Azerbaijani journalist living abroad.]
A wave of arrests has followed the sacking of National Security
Minister Eldar Mahmudov in Azerbaijan in mid-October. Seven senior
officials at the ministry are among those detained.
Analysts say the purge is not about rooting out systemic corruption.
Nor does it indicate that the government is rethinking its crackdown
on opposition members, human rights defenders and independent
journalists, even though the Ministry of National Security (MNB),
successor to the Soviet-era KGB, is a key instrument for suppressing
dissent. Instead, the MNB seems to have ended up on the losing side in
a power struggle between rival factions within Azerbaijan's ruling
elite.
In a surprise move, the long-serving minister was dismissed by
presidential decree on October 17. Mahmudov had been in office since
2004.
Immediately after Mahmudov's arrest, a team of investigators was set
up to look into wider wrongdoing at the security ministry.
Significantly, its members were drawn not from the MNB itself, but
from the prosecutor general's office and the Special State Protection
Service, an elite force that guards the president and key
institutions.
After that, many more heads rolled.
Seven high-ranking MNB officers were arrested on suspicion of abusing
their powers, unlawfully interfering in businesses, and violating
individuals´ rights, according to the prosecution service. Among them
were the head of the ministry´s monitoring centre, Teymur Guliyev, the
deputy head of its counter-terrorism force, Ilgar Aliyev, and the head
of the department for combating transnational economic crime. Fizuli
Aliyev. In the main, they were accused of taking large bribes from
businessmen.
Businesspeople in Azerbaijan have begun openly complaining about their
treatment at the hands of MNB officers.
One businessman, Afsal Hasanaliyev, told the APA news agency that he
was unlawfully detained until he eventually paid a bribe of 32,000
manats (around 30,000 US dollars).
"I was kept in custody for four months and 29 days," Hasanaliyev said.
"They were asking for 100,000 manats. My lawyer was a witness to
this. I said I didn't have that kind of money."
He described how, after MNB officers visited him in prison on a daily
basis to press their demands, his family had to put up their apartment
as collateral for a 32,000-manat bank loan, and handed over the money.
"Now I'm unable to repay the money, and I live like a pauper,"
Hasanaliyev said.
Maqsud Mahmudov, another businessman, told the opposition-leaning
newspaper Yeni Musavat that he too was detained by the MNB and only
released after paying a bribe of 120,000 manats to Ilgar Aliyev, the
counter-terrorism officer now in custody.
On November 10, Akif Chovdarov, an influential figure who headed the
MNB department for energy and transport security, was dismissed and
arrested.
The net widened on November 12, when President Ilham Aliyev sacked the
communications and IT minister, Ali Abbasov, who was seen as having
close ties to the MNB.
"The ministry for communications and IT effectively turned into a
department that carried out all the orders it got from the MNB," Aydin
Mirzazade, a parliamentarian from the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan party,
told the Sputnik.az news agency. "That's why the president fired the
minister."
The purge has extended to others seen as close to ex-minister
Mahmudov. One of them is Vidadi Mammadov, head of the tax offences
department at the ministry for taxation.
Beytullah Huseynov, a relative of Mahmudov and head of the Baku
Telephone Network, has also become entangled. The Trend news agency
reports that he has been arrested and accused of embezzlement, abuse
of office and negligence.
As for Mahmudov, his fall from grace seems irrevocable. Hakimeldostu
Mehdiyev, a human rights activist living in Nakhichevan, an exclave of
Azerbaijan tucked between Armenia and Turkey, reports that a bust of
the MNB chief's father, renowned economist Ahmed Mahmudov, has been
demolished and a high school called after him has been given a new
name.
POLITICAL INTRIGUE RATHER THAN REFORM
Commentators interviewed by IWPR believe the turbulence reflects
conflicts between powerful elite groupings rather than a sudden desire
to clean up state institutions.
"In this government, no one gets removed from office or arrested for
illegal acts, since the entire functioning of the system is based on
illegality,"Arif Hajili, chairman of the opposition party Musavat,
said in a recent interview.
Speaking to his party's newspaper Yeni Musavat, Hajili argued that the
two ministers were summarily removed from their jobs because the
Azerbaijani leadership had lost confidence in their previously
unwavering loyalty.
Mahmudov, in particular, played a key role as boss of a government
agency responsible for the surveillance and intimidation of opposition
groups.
"The upside of the dismissal of these two ministers is that officials
in power have come to understand that this is what lies in store for
them," Hajili added.
Oqtay Gulaliyev, head of a human rights and environmental NGO called
Kur, predicts that more people will be swept up in the wave of
dismissals and arrests.
"It's long been known that the entire communications and IT ministry
was under the MNB's thumb. Among the ministries, there have always
been groupings [divided] by sphere of influence. For a long time, that
never worried anyone, for some reason, yet suddenly there are these
developments. All of it points to growing strains between the clans
that are in power. These tensions previously went unnoticed as they
were on the inside, but now it's all come out into the open."
While the charges against Mahmudov and others mostly involve extortion
against businesses, senior MNB officers have been named in numerous
cases where human rights activists and others have been assaulted and
otherwise mistreated.
In October, the Azerbaijani government was forced to agree to pay
compensation of 28,000 euro to journalist Agil Khalil. The European
Court of Human Rights ruled that Azerbaijan had violated Khalil's
rights after hearing that MNB officers beat him up while he was
reporting on a land abuse case. Khalil was later stabbed in the chest
by persons unknown. During the investigation of the MNB officers'
attack, investigators tortured Khalil and forced him to say he was
stabbed by his "boyfriend", an individual he says he never met, let
alone had a relationship with.
Now that open season has been declared on the MNB, even pro-government
politicians have come out and said the secret service has lost its
way.
Zahid Oruj of the pro-government Ana Vatan party, for example, told
the Moderin.az news site that an institution that was supposed to have
the highest professional standards and guard the country against major
external security threats had "lowered itself to become a
counter-narcotics agency".
Ilgar Valiyev, a spokesman for the opposition movement NIDA, told IWPR
that Mahmudov had replaced many security service officers with
policemen from the interior ministry, his previous posting.
Mahmudov's successor may make matters even worse, Valiyev said. Within
days of his dismissal, President Aliyev appointed Madat Guliyev as
security minister on an acting basis. Guliyev was previously head of
the prisons service and deputy justice minister.
"In his previous post Madat Guliyev was known for having an iron fist.
During his time there, the number of mysterious deaths rose in penal
institutions, and various methods were applied to pressure political
prisoners," Valiyev said. "Given his past record, I believe these
changes will make the MNB's professional level even worse."
Hayastan or Bust.Comment
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Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs
Comment
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Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs
Monday, January 11, 2016
Azerbaijan Suffers From Currency Crash, Low Oil Prices
When news of the Central Bank's decision reached the streets, people across Azerbaijan rushed to shops to scoop up whatever they could before prices adjusted to the new reality.
A massive tumble in Azerbaijan's currency has shuttered shops and sent people scrambling to convert their manats into foreign currency or durable goods.
By Arzu Geybullayeva and Tony Wesolowsky
January 10, 2016
Deeply in debt, a man in Azerbaijan sets himself alight -- highlighting the human cost of the collapse of the country's currency.
Alik Navruzov's self-immolation in front of his workplace on January 7 was said to be his response to the sudden crash of the manat, which has lost about a third of its value since Azerbaijan's Central Bank announced in December that it would no longer prop up the currency.
According to colleagues at the school in Neftchala where he worked as a maintenance man, Navruzov complained of having bank loans he could no longer make payments on.
The 63-year-old survived, and is now reportedly in stable condition at a hospital in the city, located in the eponymous oil-producing region some 130 kilometers south of the capital. But there appears to be no signs of relief for Navruzov's dire financial straits -- a situation that is all too familiar to a growing number of people in Azerbaijan.
Less than a year after the Caspian Sea state hosted the first-ever European Games, an event President Ilham Aliyev had hoped would showcase his country's prosperity, it's evident that from the government to the people on the street, Azerbaijan is struggling financially.
In announcing its decision to stop propping up the currency on December 21, the Central Bank argued that the practice had diminished foreign reserves by more than half.
Falling global energy prices have hit hard in Azerbaijan, where energy exports account for about three-quarters of state revenues. To offset the envisioned budget hit, the Central Bank changed the way it values the manat nearly a year ago. But the move away from the dollar to a dollar-euro basket in February 2015 also caused a drop in the currency.
Feeling The Pinch
Currency devaluation always comes with the double whammy of falling spending power and rising prices, and Azerbaijan is no different.
When news of the Central Bank's decision reached the streets, people across the country rushed to shops to scoop up whatever they could before prices adjusted to the new reality.
With less money in their pockets, many people in Azerbaijan are forced to forego less essential items, but food is definitely not one of them.
As a result, the cost of many items -- such as tomatoes and grapes -- has shot up, in some cases by as much as 100 percent.
A shop owner in the capital, Baku, explained to RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service why he had to raise his prices.
"I, too, pay rent. My landlord raised the rent. My suppliers also raised prices," Shamil Hasanov said. "What can I do? The prices for everything -- butter, rice, sugar -- all were raised, and I can no longer sell them for less."
Even small expenditures are being weighed more carefully by average Azerbaijanis.
Valikhan Karimov, a 68-year-old pensioner, explained why buying his grandson a ticket for an attraction on Baku's busy promenade requires sacrifice.
"I paid two manats for this ride, which lasted two minutes. I made those two manats selling 10 kilos of apples," he said. "I come here once a year [eds. he lives in Quba] to take my grandchild out, and this is all I can afford."
Others feeling the pinch are those people who took out bank loans, paid out, of course, in manats, but calculated in dollars.
Abdul Akhundov, who works in the IT field, said he can't make a dent in paying down his loans from two banks worth some $3,000.
"I took a loan a year ago, before the devaluation. I asked the bank for a loan in manats but the gave it to me in dollars," Akhundov lamented. "No matter how much I argued with the bank at the time telling them we did not live in America so why make me take a loan in dollars it didn't make any difference."
Elnur Bayramov, who lives in Ganca, said he called his bank immediately after the manat plunged to tell them he couldn't make payments anymore.
"My loan was in the amount of $2,000 and I haven't even bothered to figure out how much I owe now with the new exchange rate," Bayramov said. "I called the bank, too, telling them to stop calling me every minute and that I will pay when I have the money and if they are not happy about it they can take me to court."
Looking For Funds To Help
Aliyev's government, criticized in the West for its abysmal human rights record, appears ready to help those hardest hit by the increasing prices.
Labor and Social Welfare Minister Salim Muslimov announced on January 6 that his ministry was working on ways to raise welfare payments, and should deliver proposals by the end of the month.
He said his ministry was monitoring prices in six regions of the country -- Baku, Sumgait, Mingachevir, Ganca, Lankaran, Tovuz, and Agsu -- and, based on those observations, his ministry would calculate how much social-welfare payouts should rise.
However, raising expenditures is something Aliyev's government is probably less than eager to do. Officials in his government now appear preoccupied with finding where and how to cut costs.
The Foreign Ministry announced on January 5 that Baku was looking to make cuts to staffing and other costs at its foreign embassies, but denied reports in the Azerbaijani press that a number of embassies in South American countries would be closed.
Meanwhile, ordinary Azerbaijanis are left to cope with the hardships amid growing disillusionment with the government.
"I worked in three different places before manat died," wrote one respondent to a questionnaire by RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service. "I don't know in how many more places I will have to work now."
Another respondent expected the manat to continue on its downward spiral.
"Everybody knows the dollar will continue to get more expensive," the person wrote. "In this situation, you should take out bank credit in manats and then convert it into dollars and wait for the next devaluation. This way we will 'rob' the banks that usually 'rob' us."Comment
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Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs
Azerbaijan Hit By Currency Crash, Low Oil Prices
Baku, Azerbaijan. Source: Wikipedia Commons.
Baku, Azerbaijan. Source: Wikipedia Commons.
BY RFE RL JANUARY 12, 2016
By Arzu Geybullayeva and Tony Wesolowsky
(RFE/RL) — Deeply in debt, a man in Azerbaijan sets himself alight — highlighting the human cost of the collapse of the country’s currency.
Alik Navruzov’s self-immolation in front of his workplace on January 7 was said to be his response to the sudden crash of the manat, which has lost about a third of its value since Azerbaijan’s Central Bank announced in December that it would no longer prop up the currency.
According to colleagues at the school in Neftchala where he worked as a maintenance man, Navruzov complained of having bank loans he could no longer make payments on.
The 63-year-old survived, and is now reportedly in stable condition at a hospital in the city, located in the eponymous oil-producing region some 130 kilometers south of the capital. But there appear to be no signs of relief for Navruzov’s dire financial straits — a situation that is all too familiar to a growing number of people in Azerbaijan.
Less than a year after the Caspian Sea state hosted the first-ever European Games, an event President Ilham Aliyev had hoped would showcase his country’s prosperity, it’s evident that from the government to the people on the street, Azerbaijan is struggling financially.
In announcing its decision to stop propping up the currency on December 21, the Central Bank argued that the practice had diminished foreign reserves by more than half.
Falling global energy prices have hit hard in Azerbaijan, where energy exports account for about three-quarters of state revenues. To offset the envisioned budget hit, the Central Bank changed the way it values the manat nearly a year ago. But the move away from the dollar to a dollar-euro basket in February 2015 also caused a drop in the currency.
Feeling The Pinch
Currency devaluation always comes with the double whammy of falling spending power and rising prices, and Azerbaijan is no different.
When news of the Central Bank’s decision reached the streets, people across the country rushed to shops to scoop up whatever they could before prices adjusted to the new reality.
With less money in their pockets, many people in Azerbaijan are forced to forego less essential items, but food is definitely not one of them.
As a result, the cost of many items — such as tomatoes and grapes — has shot up, in some cases by as much as 100 percent.
A shop owner in the capital, Baku, explained to RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service why he had to raise his prices.
“I, too, pay rent. My landlord raised the rent. My suppliers also raised prices,” Shamil Hasanov said. “What can I do? The prices for everything — butter, rice, sugar — all were raised, and I can no longer sell them for less.”
Even small expenditures are being weighed more carefully by average Azerbaijanis.
Valikhan Karimov, a 68-year-old pensioner, explained why buying his grandson a ticket for an attraction on Baku’s busy promenade requires sacrifice.
“I paid two manats for this ride, which lasted two minutes. I made those two manats selling 10 kilos of apples,” he said. “I come here once a year [eds. he lives in Quba] to take my grandchild out, and this is all I can afford.”
Others feeling the pinch are those people who took out bank loans, paid out, of course, in manats, but calculated in dollars.
Abdul Akhundov, who works in the IT field, said he can’t make a dent in paying down his loans from two banks worth some $3,000.
“I took a loan a year ago, before the devaluation. I asked the bank for a loan in manats but the gave it to me in dollars,” Akhundov lamented. “No matter how much I argued with the bank at the time telling them we did not live in America so why make me take a loan in dollars it didn’t make any difference.”
Elnur Bayramov, who lives in Ganca, said he called his bank immediately after the manat plunged to tell them he couldn’t make payments anymore.
“My loan was in the amount of $2,000 and I haven’t even bothered to figure out how much I owe now with the new exchange rate,” Bayramov said. “I called the bank, too, telling them to stop calling me every minute and that I will pay when I have the money and if they are not happy about it they can take me to court.”
Looking For Funds To Help
Aliyev’s government, criticized in the West for its abysmal human rights record, appears ready to help those hardest hit by the increasing prices.
Labor and Social Welfare Minister Salim Muslimov announced on January 6 that his ministry was working on ways to raise welfare payments, and should deliver proposals by the end of the month.
He said his ministry was monitoring prices in six regions of the country — Baku, Sumgait, Mingachevir, Ganca, Lankaran, Tovuz, and Agsu — and, based on those observations, his ministry would calculate how much social-welfare payouts should rise.
However, raising expenditures is something Aliyev’s government is probably less than eager to do. Officials in his government now appear preoccupied with finding where and how to cut costs.
The Foreign Ministry announced on January 5 that Baku was looking to make cuts to staffing and other costs at its foreign embassies, but denied reports in the Azerbaijani press that a number of embassies in South American countries would be closed.
Meanwhile, ordinary Azerbaijanis are left to cope with the hardships amid growing disillusionment with the government.
“I worked in three different places before manat died,” wrote one respondent to a questionnaire by RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service. “I don’t know in how many more places I will have to work now.”
Another respondent expected the manat to continue on its downward spiral.
“Everybody knows the dollar will continue to get more expensive,” the person wrote. “In this situation, you should take out bank credit in manats and then convert it into dollars and wait for the next devaluation. This way we will ‘rob’ the banks that usually ‘rob’ us.”General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”Comment
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Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs
Uh oh
Azerbaijan: More Trouble in Nardaran
Eurasianet - Azerbaijan on January 11 carried out a fresh clampdown on the religiously conservative town of Nardaran in an attempt to stamp out what it claims is an allegedly Islamic uprising.
Citing police sources, the pro-government news site APA claimed that “more than 60” people had been detained, and 50 subsequently released. An exact tally was not immediately available. The government itself has not released an official statement.
Scores of arrests appear to have been made in Nardaran, located about 30 kilometers northeast of the capital, Baku, since a raid last November that left at least six dead. Among others, the head of the town’s council of elders, Natig Karimov, was detained last week on charges of treason and espionage. Local spiritual leader Taleh Bagirzade was arrested in November.
Authorities claim that the town’s residents harbored plans for an armed coup and colluded with an unnamed foreign power — believed to mean Azerbaijan’s southern neighbor, Iran -- against Azerbaijani security interests. Claims long have run rampant in Azerbaijan, a predominantly Shi'a country, that Iran’s Shi’ite government tries to influence or stir up trouble in Nardaran.
As Iran expressed an interest in monitoring the actions taken in Nardaran, Baku started to pull back from recent expressions of chumminess over potential joint energy-export projects.
Nonetheless, some non-governmental analysts tend to dismiss the allegations about Iran's role in Nardaran as exaggerated.
Iran “has no appetite for fomenting instability on its northern borders,” Eldar Mamedov, an Azerbaijani political adviser in the European Parliament, wrote in a December 2015 commentary for EurasiaNet.org. “ The discontent in Nardaran and, possibly, other parts of the country has local roots.”
Azerbaijani police are known for liberally dispensing accusations of coups and high treason, most notably against government critics, of which Bagirzade is one.
Commenting to Ekho Kavkaza, one Azerbaijan-based journalist, noting Azerbaijan’s current economic woes, claimed that the government has decided “to play a preemptive game and render harmless the most protest-prone part of the population before it all turns into protests.”
Azerbaijan’s reputation for running roughshod over perceived challenges to the authority of President Ilham Aliyev and his establishment does little to dispel such conclusions. The government has gone out of its way to silence critical journalism and now very little about the events in Nardaran is accessible to independent media inquiry.General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”Comment
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Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs
General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”Comment
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Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs
Protests in Fizuli are close to the front- Azeris are no doubt pulling units off the line to quell the protests. Despite to incoming crackdown, this will not go away and the problems are fundamental to all aspects of Azeri society. Things are not looking good when protests include multiple areas countrywide and not Lenkoran and Nadaran. Dubai is probably looking better and better to the Aliyev clan.
Protests Erupt In Azerbaijan Over Jobs, Economic Woes
4 hours ago
RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service
WATCH: Security forces moved in to deal with protests across Azerbaijan, following the collapse of the country's currency, the manat -- which has lost 40 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar in recent days. (RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service) 0:54
Protests have broken out in a handful of districts across Azerbaijan in the latest sign of mounting frustration over joblessness, price hikes, and other economic woes in the oil-rich Caucasus country.
In at least one case, troops were sent to intervene, and detentions were reported in several cities.
The unrest follows a steep drop in the value of the national currency, the manat, and with oil revenues, which make up a vast majority of Azerbaijan's exports, plummeting and sending shock waves through the economy.
The protesters rallied across Azerbaijan on January 13 -- in the districts of Fizuli, Aqsu, Aqcabardi, Siyazan, and Lankaran -- to express their grievances, which include anger over price rises on essential items like flour and bread.
Military units were deployed in Siyazan to prevent a march by demonstrators, and eyewitnesses told RFE/RL that at least two demonstrators there were detained.
In the district of Lankaran, police detained several more protesters, including a local chairman of the opposition Popular Front Party (AXCP), Nazim Hasanli, and the chairman of the local branch of the opposition Musavat party, Iman Aliyev. Both men were reportedly found guilty of taking part in an unsanctioned protest and sentenced to one month in jail.
Hasanli and Aliyev had pleaded their innocence, saying they had nothing to do with the rallies.
Four demonstrators were said to have been fined and released.
Rasim Novruzov, a deputy head of the district administration in Aqsu, said the events in his district could not be described as protests, adding that local authorities had talked to the demonstrators and agreed to tackle the issue of the high price of flour.
Falling Oil Prices Hit Hard
The Azerbaijani manat last month fell by around one-third against the dollar as the central bank eased its defense of the currency and relinquished some control of its exchange rate, with slumping oil prices spurring a flight to the dollar.
Azerbaijan's central bank said it was forced to loosen the currency regime to "preserve hard-currency reserves...and ensure the national economy's competitiveness on the international arena."
In February 2014, Azerbaijan's central bank changed the way it pegged the manat, moving away from the dollar and toward a dollar-euro basket.
Energy exports account for about three-quarters of Azerbaijan's state revenues, so falling oil prices have hit the country hard.
Earlier this month, a 63-year-old maintenance man set himself on fire in front of his workplace, reportedly after complaining to colleagues of bank loans he could not repay.
Another oil-rich former Soviet Caspian state, Kazakhstan, in August abandoned a trading corridor in favor of letting its currency float more freely. Before that move, the Kazakh tenge was officially valued at about 188 to the dollar; by January 12, its value had fallen to almost 370 tenges to the dollar.
Economies in the Caucasus and Central Asia are also struggling due to slowdowns in China and Russia.Last edited by Joseph; 01-13-2016, 10:09 AM.General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”Comment
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Re: Azerbaijan - Internal Political Affairs
Looks like someone got sacked for not preventing the protests in Fizuli.
Executive head rep of Azerbaijan’s Fizuli district arrested
15 JANUARY 2016, 20:46 (GMT+04:00)
A representative of executive power’s head of Fizuli district in the administrative district of Fizuli city Shakir Hajiyev has been arrested in Baku, the Prosecutor General's Office of Azerbaijan told Trend Jan.15.
On the basis of the information received by law enforcement authorities on January 14, operative-investigative activities were conducted. During the search conducted in the apartment of Shakir Hajiyev located in Binagadi district of Baku, a Makarov pistol and five cartridges were discovered.
The Investigation Department of the Baku Main Police Department has initiated a criminal case under Article 228.1 (illegal purchase, transfer, selling, storage, transportation or carrying of arms, accessories to it, ammunition, explosives and explosive devices).
Hajiyev has been brought to investigation on suspicion of committing the above mentioned crime, and Baku’s Sabail District Court has chosen a measure of restraint in the form of arrest in his regard.General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”Comment
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