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| Security forces release father-in-law Abid Gafarov |
| 2024-05-01 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. [KavkazUzel] Police officers released Alipanakh Gashumov, who is the father-in-law of activist and author of the novel “Andalunya” Abid Gafarov. The authorities are persecuting Gafarov’s relatives and himself because in his book he pointed out torture and violations of people’s rights during the “Terter affair,” human rights activist Rufat Safarov believes. As the "Caucasian Knot" reported, in Azerbaijan on the evening of April 29, people in civilian clothes came to search the private house of activist Abid Gafarov, who is in political exile in Europe. They confiscated copies of Gafarov’s books, a laptop and took his father-in-law to an unknown direction. On the night of April 30, Abid Gafarov's father-in-law Alipanakh Gashumov was released. After the search, people in civilian clothes took Gashumov to a police station. An hour later he was released. Gafarov himself announced this. “Everything ended well, largely thanks to human rights activists and representatives of independent media, who promptly covered the search in our house and the actual detention of my father-in-law. The illegal actions of security forces in civilian clothes caused a resonance on social networks and, although my books were irrevocably confiscated, my father-in-law was ultimately they left him alone and released him,” Abid Gafarov told the “Caucasian Knot” correspondent. The search in Gafarov's house and the detention of his father-in-law is alarming, said Rufat Safarov, executive director of the NGO Line of Protection . “It is clear that the goal was to confiscate copies of Abid Gafarov’s novel “Andalunya,” in which he described the horrors of victims of torture who were persecuted in the “ Terter case .” It was not clear why they began to bother his father-in-law, an elderly man who was taken from his home at night , they kept me somewhere else and then finally released me,” Safarov told the “Caucasian Knot” correspondent. The "Caucasian Knot" does not yet have a comment from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan. The department's press service did not respond to a written request. Let us recall that earlier Abid Gafarov said that the novel “Andalunya” is an allusion to the “Terter Affair” in Azerbaijan. “On April 27, 42 copies of the book presented at the book exhibition “Okhu” (“Reading”) in the Park of the Academy of Sciences in Baku were confiscated by people in civilian clothes. Ruslan Farzaliev, who presented the book at the exhibition and suffered during the “Terter events”, was detained and released many hours later,” Gafarov previously told a “Caucasian Knot” correspondent. The book "Andalunya" is written in Azerbaijani language and in an original style. It tells about the life of people in the state of Andalunia with distorted socio-political views, noted the author of the blog “ Wind from Absheron ” on the “Caucasian Knot” on March 29. “The book is written in a harsh style, the author does not advise people with weak psyches to read it. In “Andalunya” Gafarov also talks about the disappearance of citizens caught in the millstone of unemployment, their inherent concepts of courage and honor,” the blogger explained . The “Terter case” refers to the events when, in the spring of 2017, a group of military and civilians was arrested in Baku on charges of collaborating with the Armenian intelligence services and preparing sabotage. During the investigation, eight people were tortured to death, four of them were subsequently posthumously rehabilitated. In 2021, members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe indicated that over 200 military personnel were victims of torture, 11 of whom died. On November 1, 2021, the Azerbaijani prosecutor’s office admitted the torture of the accused in the “Terter case.” In December 2022, 19 people acquitted in the Terter case were released. The court also dismissed cases against two deceased persons. In January, those acquitted reported that the Azerbaijani authorities were putting pressure on them, prohibiting them from communicating with each other and with journalists. Although most of those convicted in the Terter case have been rehabilitated, 10 military personnel still remain in custody. |
| Posted by:badanov |