Torture, persecution, kidnapping, harassment and other pressure mechanisms are frequent cases that Azerbaijani opposition-minded journalists, political party activists and human right defenders expose to, although the Azerbaijani government has ratified Convention against Torture of UN in August 1996 and Convention against Torture of European Council in December 2001. (12-NOV-2004)

Methods
According to the analysis of the local “Against Violence” Human Rights Centre (AVHRC) great majority of the tortures are exerted on opposition activists and aim to completely stifle and scare the political opponents of the ruling party. The AVHRC has documented the following methods of torture that are often used in Azerbaijan: threats, isolation, starvation, blindfolding, squeeze hand fingers between doors, injection of needles to hand fingers, beating the foot with rubber and wooden clubs, electrocution- shocking the body with electricity, hanging by the feet, forced standing, putting on gas-mask and closing air holes, mock execution, deprivation of medical care, water deprivation etc.

Venues
Persons who are detained in police stations and prosecutors’ offices, also guardhouses undergo to torture just to urge them to bear witnesses or to plead guilty of crime which they do not commit. The detainees often subject to tortures mostly at night by police or athletic people in black-masks, in secrecy and in the absence of lawyers. There exists undeniable facts that the tortures predominantly held in Investigation Office of Republican Prosecutor, Department on Struggle Against Organized Crime under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Head Police Office of Baku City, transitory detention cells and prisons. 
In accordance to the estimations of the AVHRC, 5 people died as a result of the incredible tortures during the pre-investigatory period. In particularly, the wave of illegal arrests and tortures were at the culmination point just after the disputed presidential elections of last year. As said by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on post-election violence in Baku, some of the alleged instances of torture took place in the Baku headquarters of a police group known as the department on Struggle against Organized Crime. Several opposition activists said they were taken there, beaten on the soles of their feet, threatened with rape and, in one case, subjected to an electric shock machine supervised by the department´s top official.
 
Still ongoing…
On Saturday, Muhammad Rzayev, a reporter for the opposition newspaper Azadlig in the Nakhichevan province was kidnapped by five masked men and taken outside the city. The individuals, lowering the journalist’s head into water, demanded him to stop his socio-political activity and threatened to kill him if he didn´t.