Tartar Case

The Azerbaijani authorities claim one person was killed as a result, while human rights defenders say the number is about 13, and many were wrongfully convicted and given hefty prison sentences.

In May 2017 in the aftermath of renewed clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh several Azerbaijani law enforcement bodies released a statement claiming that “a group of military officers and civilians of weak will betrayed the nation, the homeland and the state, lost the spirit of citizenship and devotion to the motherland and engaged in secret cooperation with enemy intelligence by repeatedly giving them information of military secrecy for the sake of their financial interests.”[1] The statement also claimed that some took part in: "sabotage and terrorist activities, which were planned to be carried out by the intelligence and special services of the enemy in public places in Baku".

Based on testimonies of the victims and their relatives, people were stripped naked, thrown out of windows, beaten with sticks, had their nails pulled out, subjected to electroshock and other form of extreme torture and humiliation.

[4] For four years, the government maintained complete secrecy about the case as it was classified as a State secret and there was no coverage about it in pro-state media outlets.

[7] In June 2021 a group of PACE deputies launched an initiative to appoint a special rapporteur to investigate the use of torture in Azerbaijan.

He added that the case was deliberately inflated by "people with an Armenian essence", and in a "completely unreasonable way" they were trying to attract undue attention to it.

In an interview given to BBC in June 2021, human rights activists Leyla Yunus, explained the attention to the case in local media by the internal political struggle in security forces, suggesting that President Ilham Aliyev may use the case to replace one of the groups among the security forces.

[12] Ilham Aslanoglu Tahmazov, a human rights activist who was one of the first ones publicising the Tartar case was arrested in June 2022 after his interview on the AzerFreedom YouTube channel about mass torture.

But that did not stop the victims, their families and their advocates from writing letters, holding protests and giving more interviews and demanding a proper and complete investigation.

[3] In December 2021, a joint statement by the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Security Service of Azerbaijan was released.