On 8 March 2024, the BMGPD officially charged Mr Zeynalov with conspiracy to commit bulk cash smuggling under Section 206.3.2 of the Criminal Code and served him with an arraignment. According to the arraignment, Mr Zeynalov was charged with the following:

1. Smuggling (conspired beforehand with co-conspirators)

a) acting with the intention of greed and the purpose of gaining illicit income, conspired beforehand with co-conspirators [their names were mentioned above] and other persons (qeyriləri) whose identities were sought under preliminary investigation, unlawfully to transport a significant amount (xeyli miqdarda) of foreign currency to [Azerbaijan];

b) committed bulk cash smuggling that obtained currency in foreign countries, whose source is unknown to the preliminary investigation currently, at different dates, including 2023-2024, upon returning from various foreign trips to [Azerbaijan], either by evading customs control or misusing fraudulent documents or customs identification means or violating financial reporting requirements (either not declaring or wrongly declaring);

c) With other co-conspirators, they divided these among themselves and conducted various financial transactions, thus gaining considerable [illicit] income totalling 123.048,96 AZN.

Legal Proceedings

On 08 March 2024, the prosecution authorities applied to the Khatai District Court to remand Mr Zeynalov in custody, citing the gravity of the offences and the risk of him absconding or obstructing the investigation. By a decision of 8 March 2024, the Khatai District Court ordered Mr Zeynalov’s remand in custody for four months (until 6 July 2024), endorsing the remand application. 

Mr Zeynalov appealed against the detention order. On 14 March 2024, the Baku Appeal Court dismissed the appeal.

The prosecution applied to the Khatai District Court requesting an extension of the his remand in custody. The reasoning for the extension application was the same reasoning of the remand application and added an extension of the preliminary investigation period including potential new charges against Mr Zeynalov.

On 03 July 2024, the Khatai District Court granted an extension of the remand in custody application, citing, inter alia, potential new charges against Mr Zeynalov for four months by 06 October 2024.

Mr Zeynalov appealed the district court’s extension order, relying on the absence of an objective basis for the extension. On 08 July 2024, the Baku Appeal Court dismissed the appeal, endorsing the reasoning of the first-instance court.

Reasons for which Mr Zeynalov should be regarded political prisoner

1. The following considerations should be emphasized in this totality assessment in the general contextual evaluation of a distinct state of affairs (Ibrahimov and Mammadov v. Azerbaijan, 2020, §§ 113-131): 1) The detainee’s status; 2) The sequence of the events; 3) The manner in which the investigations were carried out; 4) The authorities’ conduct.

2. The detainee’s status: The circumstances manifestly reveal that the detainee’s affiliated organisation – the IDI was one of the targets of the Government. The detainee was targeted due to his affiliation with the IDI and his activities as a project coordinator at the IDI. The following factors should be forwarded in this regard: a) Long-time and constant negative media coverage of the detainee’s affiliated civil society organisation, which intensified since November 2023 by the pro-governmental media depicting him as ‘one of the leaders of the fifth column of the Western powers; b) The detainee’s role as a project coordinator in the IDI. Accordingly, the detainee’s profile sufficiently shows that he was constantly at risk of being persecuted through unlawful legal means in the general restrictive political environment of the Azerbaijani political system. On this account, the detainee’s status (civil society activities) put him in jeopardy with the current political state of affairs.

3. Sequence of events: The detainee’s arrest occurred during the new repressive wake proceeding in Azerbaijan. Therefore, the relevant sequence of events should be synthetically assessed. The proto-repression began in the last quarter of 2022. In December 2022, civic activist Bakhtiyar Hajiyev was arrested. In June 2023, the protests against the gold mine located in the village of Soyudlu, Gadabay, and the coverage of those protests by informally networked NGOs and critical media (including Toplum TV) accelerated the process of repression. After the suppression of these protests, the government imposed a blockade on the village and blamed NGOs and the media for inciting the events. In July 2023, politician and economist Gubad Ibadoglu was detained. In August 2023, pro-government media organised a smear campaign against peace activists protesting military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh. Four activists were administratively detained for one month in September 2023. In August and September 2023, arrests were made against Labor Desk (İşçi Masası) activists, who aim to be the country’s only alternative trade union organisation. However, the primary follow-up campaign started in November 2023. First, the pro-government media shared smear articles targeting almost all NGOs and media outlets. Later, at the end of November 2023, AbzasMedia arrests began. These arrests continued in early March 2024 with a police raid against the detainee’s affiliated organisation and the arrest of several individuals represented in those institutions. Imran Aliyev, the head of the Meclis.info portal that monitors the parliament, was detained in April 2024. At the beginning of May 2024, Anar Mammadli, the head of Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies (EMDS), was arrested (A. Mammadli was also arrested in the previous round of repression). These arrests show a new wave of repression has already begun. The goal of this wave of repression is to paralyse the activities of post-2014 informally networked NGOs and critical media. This process started with passing the Law on Media in 2021 and the Law on Political Parties in 2022. The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe criticised both laws for being restrictive. Nevertheless, both Acts are valid and enforceable. It should be noted that a similar process took place in the repression of 2013-14. Earlier restrictive laws were passed. Later, there were arrests. In this regard, the persons arrested in this process, including the detainee, are victims of the political repression of 2023-2024. The main goal of this campaign of political arrests is to destroy the informal, networked NGOs and critical media, which have revived and taken a new format in the post-2014 era, and political arrests have an instrumental purpose here.

4. The way the investigations were carried out: The investigative authorities acted in bad faith regarding the detainee’s case and circumvented procedural safeguards. As described above, at the present time, the two kinds of initial proofs brought the detainee’s arrest, initial detention, and following remand in custody are operational information and outcomes of the search and seizure procedures. The following observations concerning operation information can be asserted in this connection. Firstly, it is not disputed that the detainee had no criminal history of being involved in bulk cash smuggling or any other crimes whatsoever prior to the events at stake (mutatis mutandis, Ibrahimov and Mammadov v. Azerbaijan, 2020, § 119). Secondly, neither the police reports nor any decisions taken subsequently contained any specifics as regards the collection and receipt of the operational information in question. Notably, it remains unknown how the police allegedly received that information, the source of information, and how that source became aware of the information (mutatis mutandis, Ibrahimov and Mammadov v. Azerbaijan, 2020, § 120). Thirdly, the operational information was withheld from the detainee’s initial defence, and he was deprived of challenging this evidence in any way. Regarding investigative measures the authorities took, the following line of argumentation should be reiterated. The investigative measures carried out into the detainees’ alleged involvement in bulk cash smuggling consisted mainly of searches of their office premises and the seizure of cash allegedly discovered due to those searches. In this connection, the Court has already found in two cases against Azerbaijan, albeit under Article 6 of the Convention, that the police’s failure to conduct a search immediately following an arrest without good reason raises legitimate concerns about the possible “planting” of evidence (see Sakit Zahidov v. Azerbaijan, no. 51164/07, § 53, 12 November 2015, and Layijov v. Azerbaijan, no. 22062/07, § 69, 10 April 2014). As submitted above, the search and seizure procedures were conducted with violation of procedural safeguards such as denial of the presence of a counsel, the detainee’s and others’ placement under the effective control of police officers, and executing the procedures under the guise of the operational search measures instead of criminal procedural search and seizure procedure, therefore, acting in bad faith.

5. The authorities’ conduct: The relevant authorities, at first, denied the detainee procedural safeguards. The domestic courts failed to assess criminal procedural legislation properly. Moreover, the pro-governmental media constantly published defamatory coverage about the detainee. Investigative authorities leaked personal files obtained through investigative measures to the pro-governmental media in a selective way. That led to misuse of the personal data obtained unlawfully from the detainees in this case and for the construction of defamatory content.

Conclusion

The personal factors (Ali Zeynalov’s profile, absence of convincing evidence, and constant violation of procedural rights) and contextual factors (defamatory media campaign and new wave of political repression) cumulatively indicate reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Zeynalov should be considered a political prisoner in light of Resolution 1900 (2012) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

Recommendations

Based on this conclusion, Mr Ali Zeynalov should be released unconditionally and immediately. Currently, the investigative authorities at this stage of the criminal case can terminate the case without requiring judicial proceedings. Furthermore, Mr Zeynalov should be compensated restitio in integrum.