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Gubad Ibadoghlu: Fears grow for health of detained Azerbaijani academic [1]
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Date: 2023-09
On Friday 1 September, six weeks after his arrest, Ibadoghlu developed intense chest pain, Bayramov said. The prison authorities have not fully medically examined him since 4 August and are keeping his health conditions secret from the public.
Ibadoghlu has type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, a stomach ulcer, and a number of other medical issues, including aortic root expansion in his heart, which, if it expands any more, could cause a heart attack, doctors in the UK have told him.
External organisations and doctors have not been allowed to see Ibadoghlu since his imprisonment, including the Red Cross, which has visited the detention centre where the economist is being held on three occasions.
“The prison doctor doesn’t give us any information so we can’t take a prescription to a pharmacy or a doctor. They do this on purpose,” Bayramov said, claiming his family has a letter from an NHS doctor saying that if Ibadoghlu doesn’t take his pills – he takes eight a day – “his life would be at risk”.
Bayramov continued: “These days they are giving him his medicine but they are delaying it on purpose or not giving him the right amount. This is all psychological abuse – they are trying to get him to give up.”
The 52-year-old has lost 15 kilograms since being detained nearly two months ago. Prison guards have refused him food and clean drinking water on numerous occasions, according to his son.
“The Azerbaijan government has done this before; they are known for releasing people [from prison] when their health conditions become so dire. They leave you in such a bad condition that you have no power left to fight,” Bayramov said.
In a well-known case from 2015, Leyla and Arif Yunus, husband and wife human rights activists, were released in appalling health after almost two years in prison. They had to travel abroad to seek urgent medical treatment and were still frail a year later. “We were thrown in jail, beaten, tortured. They stole our health,” Leyla Yunus told Radio Free Europe a year after her release. “They released us only because we were dying and they got scared.”
‘No one can feel safe’
On 23 July, Ibadoghlu and his wife, Irada Bayramli, were travelling to visit his sick mother outside of Baku, when their car was stopped by 20 people in civilian clothes. They were beaten and taken to police custody. Bayramli was released later that day, with bruises all over her arms, according to her son.
Ibadoghlu was initially charged with manufacturing and selling counterfeit money, which Bayramov alleges was planted in his father’s old office in Baku – a space he hadn’t used in nine years. He was later charged with the preparation, storage, and distribution of religious extremist materials.
Iskra Kirova, the advocacy director for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch, told openDemocracy that the charges are “completely unfounded” and will have a “chilling effect” on the rest of civil society in Azerbaijan, which has faced a wide-ranging crackdown in recent years.
“It really also indicates that no one can really feel safe and that any criticism of the authorities will be met with a very harsh response,” Kirova said.
Kirova added that Ibadoghlu’s detention conditions are “very concerning” and that there have been a number of violations. These include being denied access to his lawyer, whom Kirova said has been warned by Azerbaijani authorities that she could be disbarred for representing him.
The number of political prisoners in Azerbaijan has doubled since last September, when there were 99 such detainees. Today, there are 204, according to The Azerbaijan Freedom for Political Prisoners Union.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/gubad-ibadoghlu-azerbaijan-heath-detained-prison-political-government-academic-lse/
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