The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Human Rights Center of Azerbaijan (HRCA) express their deepest concern about the conditions of detention and the legal status of detainees condemned to life imprisonment in Azerbaijan. On 18 June 2007, in Qobustan prison, 38 inmates condemned to life sentence began a hunger strike to alert the authorities about their precarious situation. (27-JUL-07)

Placed on website by Shahla Ismailova /HRH Baku

In their joint report “On the death row, for eternity?” FIDH and HRCA had already called the attention of the international community on the situation of prisoners in Azerbaijan. The abolition of the death penalty in 1998 provoked uncertainty as to the legal status of people on the death row. The law on the abolition automatically replaced the capital punishment by the life imprisonment, while the maximal punishment existing in the Criminal Code was 15 years of prison. The new Criminal Code adopted in 2000 failed to clarify this situation.

The absence of perspective of the re-examination of life sentences leaves to the inmates only one possibility of protest: the hunger strikes. The current strike is the fifth massive hunger strike organized in Qobustan since 1999.

FIDH and HRCA call upon the Azerbaijani authorities to proceed with the necessary reforms to improve the conditions of detention of the prisoners, notably by implementing recommendations by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the UN Committee against the torture.