Azerbaijan human rights activists accuse each other

The Chairman of the Committee to Protect Rights of Officers of the OPON Special Police Force, Famil Suleymanov, has accused human rights activists Gadjimurad and Rena Sadaddinovs of bribery. He made these accusations public at a press conference in the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly National Committee of Azerbaijan. He said he had concrete facts that "the Sadaddinovs put any convict on the list of "political prisoners" under the guise of OPON officers for $3,000. These lists are submitted to the Council of Europe then." According to Mr Suleymanov, 32 out of 88 people in a new list of "political prisoners" submitted to the Council of Europe are OPON officers, only 5 of them being true ones.

In his interview with the Caucasian Knot correspondent, human rights activist Gadjimurad Sadaddinov called the accusations against him a "lying provocation". "Such accusations against me appear not for the first time. And there are no grounds for them. On the contrary, I did everything to help the OPON officers," Mr Sadaddinov said.

To note, officers of the OPON special police force were arrested and accused of making an attempt of coup d'etats in 1994 and 1995. They were declared political prisoners after Azerbaijan had entered the Council of Europe.