Azerbaijan: Youth Activists' Trial Postponed

The trial of jailed Azerbaijani youth activist-bloggers Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli has been postponed for two weeks after prosecutors, the complainants and a key state witness failed to appear in court.

The youth activists, on trial for hooliganism, claim that two men, Vasul Mammadov and Babek Huseynov, attacked them in a Baku cafe in early July while they were discussing ways to involve Azerbaijani youth in upcoming municipal elections. The activists argue that their arrest is related to their work with youth movements, as well as with an Internet video clip that satirized Azerbaijani corruption. Mammadov and Huseynov, in turn, argue that the two activists started the fight.

Despite their claims, Mammadov and Huseynov, as well as the café owner, did not respond to a summons to provide additional testimony at an October 13 hearing. Prosecution attorneys also failed to appear in court. Their absence sparked sharp protests from defense attorneys when the judge subsequently decided to postpone the trial until October 27.

The defendants' parents, after a 45-minute meeting with their sons, expressed similar anger and frustration with the decision.

"A trial for this little incident has lasted two months. Why have the hearings been postponed for two weeks?" fumed Hikmet Hajizade, father of 26-year-old Adnan Hajizade and a former Azerbaijani ambassador to Moscow. "What can happen in these two weeks? A scenario writer is sitting somewhere and writing [a script for the trial], and if he does not like any page, he tears it out and rewrites it."

Ombudswoman Elmira Suleymanova told the Turan news agency on October 13 that she had not yet received a response from the government to her request to release Milli and Hajizade on bail for the duration of the trial. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

A similar lack of explanation marked the decision to not allow the parents of Emin Milli to meet with their son on October 14, his 30th birthday. Supporters and friends, however, say that they will organize a series of parties in Baku, London, Paris, Strasbourg, New York and Budapest to mark the date.