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Presentation of Council on Problems of Political Prisoners held

Society Materials 17 October 2005 17:46 (UTC +04:00)

The presentation of the Council on Problems of political prisoners was held at the International Press Center on Monday. Attending the event were representatives of local non-governmental organizations, experts from Bulgaria, Latvia and Estonia, Trend reports. The �Human Rights 21st Century - Azerbaijan’ Fund, the Azerbaijani public union �Monitory at prisons’ and Bulgarian Association for Reintegration of Prisoners start monitoring of the projects on development of civil control mechanism on political prisoners to clarify the issue.

NGOs established the Council on Political Prisoners in June 2005. The main goal of the Council is to form objective and fair opinion in regard to political prisoners, inform appropriate bodies in case of their revealing, restore their rights and seek for their releasing within the cooperation with national, foreign and international organizations, as well as state bodies engaged in problems of political prisoners.

NGOs established expert group of independent lawyers in this regard. During the monitoring the Council studied the crime cases of 80 people presented to the Council of Europe as
political prisoners. The initial results of the monitoring were submitted to public and 22 experts from 9 European countries. They confirmed objectiveness and accuracy of the conclusion.

The expert group proved their criminal actions and revealed that 13 people were convicted illegally, while 13 were pardoned and released. There is no base for states that they were accused of political motives, the experts say.

The Council including 50 non-governmental organizations continues monitoring of crime cases of so called political prisoners and will develop concrete conclusion in regard to them. The Council intends to monitor the keeping places, observance of human rights in juridical bodies, consideration of the appeals to executive bodies in regard to holding of political actions.

The Council also plans to establish a science-expert commission to analyze the legislative acts.

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