On 3 February, a trial of Intigam Aliyev (left), a lawyer and the head of the partner organization of the Program "International Law in Advocacy" will start in Azerbaijan.
The human rights defender was arrested in the summer of 2014 on charges of tax evasion, abuse of office and illegal business.According to a statement of Intigam Aliyev, all of the charges do not have a legal basis, and were the result of his human rights activities, especially that related to filing complaints with the ECHR and his critical statements in the Council of Europe.
As president of the NGO "Legal Education Society", Intigam Aliyev has actively cooperated with the project of distance learning of advocates from Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine and Russia since 2009. Graduates of the project and colleagues of Intigam Aliyev were concerned about the news of his arrest and immediately reacted to the situation. The participants of the "International Law in Advocacy" prepared a statement on the situation with the detention of Intigam Aliyev and arrests of human rights defenders in Azerbaijan.The authors of the appeal called on all concerned to join the campaign of support and the struggle for the liberation of Intigam Aliyev and other political prisoners. Presently, the statement was signed by about 140 people.
The persecution of human rights lawyers for their professional activities, fortunately, is not common thing. However, unfortunately, it happens regularly and everywhere. It happens mainly in order for the state apparatus to "educate" and "intimidate" the people who have succeeded in protecting human rights from the tyranny of the the very same apparatus. In my opinion, the only real opportunity to influence the situation is to provide human rights lawyers at the international institutional level with a kind of immunity status that would prevent the his or her arrest in all but exceptional cases. For example, if a lawyer is suspected of having committed a particularly serious crime. As long as the international legal safeguards for human rights lawyers will be of declarative and not real nature – selective demonstrative trials of successful in their field human rights lawyers will continue to take place "- said the Ukrainian participant of Human Rights House Network project "International Law in Advocacy.Electronic Human Rights Education for Lawyers " Dmytro Zharyi (left), who follows the development of the case of Intigam Aliyev and is actively involved in the actions of support and solidarity with the Azerbaijani human rights defenders.
The colleagues of Intigam Aliyev from Moldova Lela Metreveli and Vyacheslav Turcan, on behalf of the Human Rights Embassy – the organization that they represent, have prepared an appeal to the summit of the Foreign Ministers of the EU Member States, which took place in Chisinau, with a request to immediately respond to the rapidly deteriorating situation in Azerbaijan in order to protect human rights and to demand the release of those arrested.
At the moment we are actively preparing
for the observation of trials if Intigam Aliyev and his colleagues, which will begin on February 3. The graduate of the Program, a lawyer from Veliky Novgorod Yegor Mylnikov (right) was in Tbilisi, where the Human Rights House held a meeting of experts and lawyers who discussed the legal position in cases of human rights defenders and prepared a "road map" of defence. The experts involved advocates, lawyers, human rights defenders from Belarus, UK, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine and Poland.
In addition, the Program graduates and experts together with Georgian colleagues from the organization "Article 42" – developed a coordination plan to oversee the litigation. Yegor Mylnikov noted that in preparation for the monitoring the experts developed a plan and were able to co-ordinate the activities of monitoring trials, including data collection and preparation of a joint report.
"Unfortunately, cases of persecution of active lawyers in the countries of the former Soviet Union are not uncommon. Personally, I had to defend my case in court twice, when I was disbarred for my advocacy activity, and when I was able to prove inconsistency of charges brought against me, I was issued a warning, which I also successfully refuted in the court." – said Yegor Mylnikov.
The situation of Intigam Aliyev and his colleagues – Arif Yunus, Leyla Yunus, Rasul Jafarov – showed the need for the development and introduction of new instruments for the protection of lawyers. In this regard, Chisinau (Moldova) will host a conference "Additional guarantees and immunities for human rights lawyers" on 13-16 February, where the participants of the "International law in Advocacy" program will discuss which tools can help protecting lawyers and ensuring their safety and independence.
"It is important to emphasize that we care about lawyers, not as an elite, but as an important element of a fair trial.After all, if a lawyer is worried for his or her safety, he or she cannot work properly and other tools cease to function. The work of lawyers and advocates with international human rights instruments is not provided with international legal guarantees and immunities which are necessary for the effective protection of the clients – victims of human rights violations. For their activity, they can be the target and object of intimidation, so it is important to develop tools that could protect the lawyers" – said the program manager of the Human Rights House Network "International Law in Advocacy" program Liudmila Ulyashyna (left).
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Intigam Aliyev is an author of ten bills, more than twenty books and hundreds of articles on human rights, the winner of the annual award «Homo Homini» in 2012 by the international organization «People in Need», which he received for personal bravery, Intigam Aliyev for many years has been protecting political prisoners in courts, and won 25 cases for them in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Currently, the ECHR concludes communication of 40 cases prepared by Intigam Aliyev in connection with violations of electoral rights during the 2010 parliamentary elections.
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The project "Electronic Human Rights Education for Lawyers" is organized in the framework of the Human Rights House Network program "International Law in Advocacy", developed and implemented in collaboration with partner organizations of Human Rights House Foundation.
The project is designed to bring lawyers from CIS countries together via online human rights training material prepared by international and national experts. The learning process is supervised by a team of managers, regional partners and coordinators. The project facilitates efforts to fulfill commitments made within the framework of the United Nations, the Council of Europe and other international organizations to support implementation of human rights (HR) obligations in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries. The objective of the project is to strengthen the promotion, protection and enforcement of human rights under the rule of law by building the capacity of lawyers through training, networking and awareness-raising on direct application of human rights standards at the national level.
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