Azerbaijan, Baku / 16 January / corr. Trend I. Alizadeh/ MP group of Musavat representing the opposition in the parliament of Azerbaijan, is developing an amnesty act for the spring session of Milli Majlis.
"In 2008, it will already be 90 years since the announcement of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, the establishment of Azerbaijani Parliament and the release of Baku from the occupation and the late president Heydar Aliyev's 85th anniversary. Therefore MP group of Musavat thinks that in connection with these anniversaries, Milli Majlis should adopt the amnesty act," Panah Hussein, the member of the MP group of Musavat and Permanent Commission of Parliament on Security and Defense said to Trend.
Azerbaijani Parliament adopted the last amnesty act on May10, 2007 in association with the 84th anniversary of the late President- Heydar Aliyev. The document was developed and submitted to Milli Majlis by Mehriban Aliyeva, an MP and the President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, and it concerns more than 14 000 prisoners.
According to MP, regardless of the conviction clause, the new amnesty act can be applied to the prisoners who have only one year of sentence left. That kind of amnesty acts were adopted during the Soviet period and in 1992 too, he said.
"In order to solve the problems of the prisoners with the help of the act, it is important to release those who are considered by the human rights activists and international organizations to be political prisoners. In addition, those who have been pardoned and amnestied in Azerbaijan can not exercise their rights, particularly the political ones. Therefore the new amnesty act should solve this problem as well," he said.
The MP group of Musavat consists of five members.