Charges:

• Public calls for terrorism, including public calls for the commission of terrorist offences or the dissemination of materials containing such calls (Article 214-2)
• Repeated public calls directed against the State, or such calls made by a group of persons, including calls for the forcible seizure or retention of power or the forcible alteration of the constitutional order (Article 281.2)

Conviction and Sentence:

On 7 January 2025, the Baku Assize Court found Hamza Mammadli guilty under Article 214-2 and Article 281.2. He was sentenced to three years under Article 214-2 and five years and six months under Article 281.2. By partial combination of the sentences, the court imposed a final sentence of six years’ imprisonment in a general-regime penitentiary institution, calculated from 2 June 2023.

Political Prisoner Status:

His imprisonment meets criteria (a) and (e) of PACE Resolution 1900 (2012):

• (a) His detention and imprisonment are assessed in the document as violating fundamental rights protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly freedom of expression and association, as well as fair-trial and liberty guarantees.
• (e) The document assesses political motives as the sole and predominant reason for pursuing and conducting the criminal proceedings that resulted in his detention and imprisonment.

Summary:

Hamza Mammadli is an Azerbaijani-born German citizen who moved to Germany in 2015, studied medicine and worked in healthcare. He acquired German citizenship in early 2023 and had no previous convictions. On 1 June 2023, he returned to Azerbaijan to attend his wedding, scheduled for 8 June, and was detained by the State Security Service at Baku airport. The criminal case had originally been initiated in July 2018 while he was living in Germany.

The prosecution concerned online publications related to Yunis Safarov and the July 2018 Ganja events. Authorities alleged that Mammadli administered several pseudonymous Facebook accounts, including “Kamil Axundov,” “Gulu Quliyeva” and “Rüfət Aliyev,” which allegedly published material calling for violent protests, attacks on police and forcible seizure of State power. Importantly, Mammadli was not accused of participating in Safarov’s attack, possessing weapons, joining an armed group or participating in the alleged organized conspiracy.

Mammadli pleaded not guilty, denied knowing or communicating with Safarov and denied owning or controlling the principal pseudonymous accounts. He alleged that investigators pressured him to accept responsibility in exchange for a shorter sentence and prepared incriminating statements on his behalf. The defence argued that the technical evidence did not reliably establish his control of the accounts: the forensic examination of his telephone did not demonstrate that it had been used to operate the disputed Facebook accounts in 2018, while numerous witnesses stated that they did not know him.

The document characterizes the case as the extension of the Ganja prosecutions to disputed online expression by a person living abroad rather than alleged participation in the underlying violence. It identifies contested account attribution, inconclusive technical evidence and allegedly pressured admissions as central fair-trial concerns. Azerbaijani human-rights defenders regard Hamza Mammadli as a political prisoner.