Azerbaijan angry at diplomats' calls to free jailed rights activists

By Nailia Bagirova

BAKU (Reuters) - Azerbaijan has accused Western diplomats of unacceptable interference in its judicial system after they called for the release of jailed human rights activists.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry reacted within hours of the diplomats' comments at an event on Wednesday evening where they said the country's record on rights and free speech had worsened in the past year.

U.S. Ambassador Mark Libby reeled off a list of names of detained individuals he described as "people fighting for human rights in their beautiful homeland."

"I call on the Azerbaijani authorities to release these and all others unjustly arrested and fulfil their international human rights obligations," he said, adding his voice to similar statements by the British, Swiss and EU ambassadors.

In a late night post on X, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry responded: "These statements are an open attempt to undermine the independent judicial system in Azerbaijan."

It added: "Interference in the course of an investigation is unacceptable and interference in the judicial process contradicts the principle of the rule of law, the fundamental principle of a law-based state."

Azerbaijan, an oil-producing country that used to be part of the Soviet Union, has seen increasing scrutiny of its rights record in the year that it hosted the U.N.'s latest climate change conference.

In the run-up to last month's conference, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev denounced as "disgusting" a letter from U.S. lawmakers criticising its rights record and calling for the release of political prisoners.

On Wednesday a veteran human rights advocate, Rufat Safarov, was placed in pre-trial detention for four months following his arrest two days earlier. His lawyer told Reuters that Safarov had pleaded not guilty in a Baku court to charges of fraud and hooliganism and intended to appeal.

Safarov, a former prosecutor, served three years in prison on bribery charges before being pardoned by Aliyev and released in 2019. Media reports said he had been due to leave within days for the United States to be presented with a human rights award.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told a news briefing in Washington on Tuesday that Washington was deeply concerned by his detention.

"And we continue to urge Azerbaijan to release all of those unjustly detained and to cease its crackdown on civil society, including human rights defenders and journalists," Patel said.

(Reporting by Nailia Bagirova, writing by Ron Popeski and Mark Trevelyan, editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

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