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 Council of EuropeSecretary General Thorbjørn Jagland expressed concern over the situation of human rights in Azerbaijan. His statement was published on the official website of the Council of Europe.

“In a telephone conversation with President Aliyev of Azerbaijan this morning, I expressed my deep concerns about the arrests of prominent human rights defenders in recent days. We agreed that the joint Committee between the Presidential Administration and the representatives of civil society, established in 2005, and which worked until December 2008, will be re-convened and that a representative of the Council of Europe will be present in this Committee," said Jagland.

"During the last week there was not a day without the arrest of known political figures on false charges. The regime has launched the rules of 1937 and has mobilized terror against the arrested Leyla Yunus and her husband, known conflict expert Arif Yunus, the head of the Human Rights Club Rasul Jafarov, and then the lawyer Intigam Aliyev. It is now preparing the arrest of the head of the IRFS Emin Huseynov, and it has just closed his NGO.

Most of the repressed activists addressed the issue of political prisoners. They were preparing a single list of political prisoners. The reason for these arrests is to prevent the spread of a complete list of the political prisoners in Azerbaijan and to "prove" the absence of those in Azerbaijan, the statement reads.

The National Council recalls that in the single list there are the names of 97 political prisoners, which was signed by 12 human rights organizations, NGOs, and independent lawyers. The human rights defenders arrested recently told international conferences about the current issue of political prisoners in Azerbaijan. The National Council believes that the arrest of all the above-mentioned persons is a political order, and it calls on the authorities to put an end to the repression and to immediately release all the political prisoners.

At the last session of the PACE in Strasburg Rasul Jafarov and several other human rights activists made a report on political prisoners in Azerbaijan. A month ago, at the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE in Baku Jafarov and other activists held a public hearing on civil society issues. Both of these events have caused a backlash in Baku. Authorities got furious with the decision of PACE to appoint a special rapporteur on political prisoners in Azerbaijan.

Human rights activist Leyla Yunus was arrested on 30 July in her house yard. A number of charges were brought up against her among them that of state treason. According to the Institute for Peace and Democracy (IPD) of Azerbaijan as of 21 May 2014 there were 130 victims of political repressions in Azerbaijan: 41 of which are prisoners of conscience and 89 are political prisoners.