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Azerbaijani human rights defenders are upset with the decree of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev about pardoning. 101 convicts were pardoned, yet only few political prisoners were included in the list, Azerbaijani information agency Turan writes.

“We submitted a list of 30 political prisoners to be pardoned in the hope that at least 10 of them would be released. But that did not happen,” member of joint working group of human rights, co-chair of Helsinki civil assembly Arzu Abdullayeva told Turan.

According to the article, the head of the Centre for Monitoring Political Prisoners Elshan Hasanov also criticized the decree noting that it was not satisfying. Only few people have been pardoned of the 100 political prisoners. Even Ilgam Mammadov, the leader of the Azerbaijani opposition movement REAL, was not pardoned, while the decision of the European Court about him is pending.

Turan also reports that Vugar Aliyev, who had got a life sentence for killing the son of Aslan Aslanov, the former head of Shamkir district, is pardoned. Another accomplice of that resonant crime, Lamiya Guliyeva, has also been released after a recent decision of the Court of Appeal. That case once again came into the spotlight with the reports about Guliyeva giving birth to a child in prison.

The list of those pardoned includes Bashir Suleymanli, the executive director of Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre, Ramil Veliyev, detained during the protest Freedom to Hijab, and Orkhan Eyubzadeh, NIDA civil movement activist.

Meanwhile, associate Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of the international organization Human Rights Watch Jane Buchanan issued a statement in which she stressed that Bashir Suleymanli and Orkhan Ayyubzade never should have been imprisoned in the first place; anդ the director of Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre, Anar Mammadli, remains in prison, despite calls from UN experts to release him.

Buchanan highlights that mostly in response to calls for key interlocutors in the EU and elsewhere to press Azerbaijan to release all of those imprisoned or awaiting trial on politically motivated charges, they had been told repeatedly that since there were likely to be pardons soon, they weren’t going to speak out about prisoners just yet. Now that the pardons have been issued, it is clear that they signal no fundamental change.

“The EU, US, the European Olympic Committees, and other key partners of Azerbaijan should urgently press the authorities to immediately and unconditionally free everyone still behind bars on bogus charges,” Jane Buchanan states.

Related: Only two political prisoners among 101 pardoned people in Azerbaijan