Azerbaijan, Baku, 27 February / corr. Trend I. Alizadeh/ The MP group of oppositional Musavat party of Azerbaijan has worked out a bill on Azerbaijan's recognition of 23 Armenian organizations as terrorist organizations and has submitted it to the parliament. "These terrorist organizations include ASALA- the Organization of Avenger for Armenian Genocide, Armenian Liberation Organization, Dashnaksutun party and the self-declared Nagorno-Karabakh government and its structures as well. Most of these organizations have been set up to commit terror acts against Azerbaijan," Panah Huseyin, the member of the Musavat MP group said to Trend on 27 February. The bill consists of four articles.
Huseyin said that the bill on Armenian Terrorist Organizations aims at establishing additional legal guarantee in a fight of Azerbaijan against terrorism.
" Azerbaijan possesses a large legislation for the fight against terrorism. Azerbaijan has also joined a number of international conventions on the fight against terrorism and has signed the bilateral agreements with different countries. Azerbaijan is required to recognize these organizations as terrorist organizations, in order to apply all the signed documents against them. The legal recognition as a terrorist organization will further simplify the fight of human right activists against them," MP said.
According to Huseyin, the executive bodies and law enforcement agencies should work out the list of the organizations that Azerbaijan considers to be terrorist organizations in line with the bill. The list should be updated annually.
According to the bill, the persons who are the members of the Armenian terrorist organizations, finance them and maintain any relation with these organizations should be made answerable according to the relevant article of Azerbaijani Penal Code.
As a punishment, the terrorism article (article 214 of PC) envisages 8 to 15 years of imprisonment with the confiscation of the property, and 8 to 12 years of imprisonment with confiscation of the property as a punishment for financing terrorism.
The MP group of Musavat party had developed a bill on changes to the Penal Code. According to the bill, the Article 214 of PC should include the words financing of terrorism.