Caspian Wire | 13 Years for Anar Mammadli, and sanctions deal on the side | September 2026

September was one of the harshest months of the year for Azerbaijan’s political prisoners, with long sentences in the “NGO case,” new arrests, allegations of abuse in prisons, and a pardon that appeared tied to an EU sanctions deal.

Anar Mammadli and Anar Abdulla are sentenced, four more sentences in the “NGO case”

On September 7, the Baku Court of Grave Crimes sentenced Anar Mammadli, chair of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies to 13 years, and his co-defendant Anar Abdulla to 12 years in prison. Mammadli was arrested in April 2024 on smuggling charges, which he denies. He leads Azerbaijan’s only independent election-monitoring organisation and has documented election violations for more than 20 years. This is his second imprisonment. He served five and half years after a 2013 arrest, during which ECtHR found his detention was meant to silence his work and PACE awarded him its Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize.

PACE rapporteur on political prisoners, Azadeh Rojhan said Mammadli’s prosecution was “ imposed for purely political reasons,” and the September 7 verdict “reinforces that finding and further deteriorates the already grave human rights situation in Azerbaijan.”

The long-running “NGO case” had four more verdicts in September. On September 7, economist Gabil Bayramov, brother of Gubad Ibadoglu, received 8 years, and Ahmad Mammadzade 7 and half years suspences sentence. Mammadzade was released from the courtroom the same day. On September 16, Hafiz Hasanov, head of the Law and Development Public Union, received an 8-year suspended sentence. And in Ganja, Ulviyya Babasoy, head of the Barda Women’s Club, was prosecuted over USAID and German Marshall Fund-backed project to prevent early marriages received 5,5 years of suspended sentence, on September 29.

On September 6, Talysh activist Hafiz Ismayilov, who has lived in Russia for 25 years and returned briefly to mark the anniversary of his father’s death, was detained by the State Security Service. His whereabouts were not known to his family until September 27, and he has been charged under the incitement to hatred article of the criminal code.

On September 26, Tarlan Bakhishli, a member of the opposition Azerbaijan Popular Front Party (APFP) left his home in the morning and was not heard from again. The party says he was framed and has since confirmed he is being held in 20 days’ administrative detention. More than 25 APFP members and activists, including party chair Ali Karimli, are currently imprisoned.

In late September, Abdul Suleymanov, a cleric who served 11 years after protesting Azerbaijan’s ban on hijabs in schools, was reportedly detained again outside his home, days after the Ministry of Education reconfirmed that ban. He was first arrested in 2011, after protests in front of the Ministry of Education, and was released in 2022 on completing his sentence.

Prison violence, self-harm and neglect

On September 25, researcher and peace activist Bahruz Samadov, serving 15 years on a treason charge he denies, cut his own arm inside the Supreme Court after judges rejected his appeal.

In a lengthy letter published by Meydan TV, four imprisoned Toplum TV staff, Ramil Babayev, Ali Zeynalov, Farid Ismayilov and Ilkin Amrahov, describe a 500-manat “exemption fee” prisoners must pay to avoid forced menial labor that, under prison hierarchy rules, would cost them their standing to speak on any serious matter. The letters name Fikrat Gafarov, operations chief of the Penitentiary Service, as the official who orders transfers into this regime, and separately allege that as a facility director he was responsible for beatings severe enough to break prisoners’ spines. Second official, Rauf Nabiyev, former head of Umbaki Penitentiary Institution, is accused of continuing the same practices, with one prisoner quoted saying “Rauf Nabiyev left us half-dead.” Two more officials, Elnur Ismayilov and Vusal Aslanov, are accused of using planted informants to fabricate cases against fellow inmates. None of these allegations have been independently verified or answered by the officials named.

Separately, two other Umbaki inmates, Vugar Eldarov and Vali Allahverdiyev, are reported to have been beaten by warden. Igbal Abilov and Tofig Yagublu were both again placed in punishment cells this month, while prosecutors separately asked a court to move Abilov to a three-year closed-regime prison, with the hearing adjourned to 12 October. Facility No. 17, where several Toplum TV defendants are held, is functionally a strict-regime prison despite its official “general regime” designation, according to Babayev and Zeynal’s letter.

Fazil Qasimov began hunger strike on 21 September, after what he says was a forged waiver bearing his lawyer’s signature. He had already written to EU and US officials in early September alleging torture and forced psychotropic medication.

The Usmanov Deal

On 22 September, EU agreed to remove Russian-Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov and businessman Mikhail Fridman from the bloc’s sanctions list, part of a wider package extending restrictions on roughly 3,000 other individuals and entities by three years. Reuters and the Financial Times reported, citing European diplomats, that France had pushed for Usmanov’s delisting in exchange for Azerbaijan releasing French nationals held in its prisons, though French officials would only confirm a “national security” rationale and Azerbaijani officials denied any interference in the EU’s sanctions process. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, called the delisting “unacceptable.”

The day after the EU’s decision, on 23 September, President Aliyev signed a pardon decree freeing 20 prisoners, among them French businessman Martin Ryan, who had been sentenced in March to 10 years on espionage charges he denies. A second French national, Anass Derraz, sentenced to 12 years, was not included and remains in custody.

International pressure

On 28 September, US Senators Peter Welch, Tim Kaine and Thom Tillis wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging that any deepening of the US-Azerbaijan Strategic Partnership be conditioned on releasing the country’s political prisoners, citing Washington’s success securing releases in Belarus as a model. The letter named Ali Karimli, Alasgar Mammadli, Anar Mammadli, Rufat Safarov, Gubad Ibadoglu, Tofig Yagublu and Ulviyya Ali among those held. A Washington Examiner feature the same week profiled Ulviyya Ali and journalist Farid Mehralizade, reporting that Vice President Vance had raised political-prisoner cases directly with Azerbaijani officials during his own visit to Baku.

On 23 September, a coalition of civil society groups, including the Independent Lawyers’ Network, the Caspian Research and Analysis Center, the Open Azerbaijan Initiative, the Institute for Democratic Initiatives and the Free Voice Collective, petitioned Council of Europe institutions and member states to take “a principled response” to Azerbaijan’s pattern of violating its membership obligations and to threats it has made about leaving the organization.

On 8 September, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Azerbaijan to pay a combined €23,000 to Shamil Abdulaliyev and Agil Ismayilov, two Muslim Unity Movement supporters, over a 2015 police raid on a house in the Nardaran settlement that left six people dead. The court found Azerbaijan used excessive force against the applicants during their arrest and failed to provide adequate medical care, a violation of Article 3 of the Convention.

EU-Azerbaijan Relations

On 15 September, President Aliyev accused the Council of Europe and European Parliament of favoring Armenia and applying double standards to Azerbaijan, and, referencing the Qatargate corruption scandal, said: “I’m saying this with full responsibility: the European Parliament is a nest of corrupt figures.”

The EU’s Special Representative for the South Caucasus, Magdalena Grono, met Foreign Minister Bayramov and presidential aides Hikmat Hajiyev and Elnur Amirbayov in Baku on 10 September, then, on 11–12 September, joined a visit organized by Azerbaijani authorities for the diplomatic community to Karabakh, describing it as an opportunity to engage with “local authorities, former IDPs and media representatives” and visit religious and cultural heritage sites. She made no mention of the political prisoners, press restrictions, or prison violence documented elsewhere in this issue, in a month when Azerbaijan handed down some of its harshest sentences of the year.

After the imprisonment

Journalist Avaz Zeynalli, freed from prison earlier this year, died of cancer on 28 September.

Economist Gubad Ibadoglu said his travel ban was lifted on 29 September and that he has since left for Germany to receive heart surgery.