Azeri news agency says activists' detention politically motivated

BBC Monitoring International Reports - Sunday, March 10, 2013 Text of report by private Azerbaijani news agency Turan Baku, 9 March: The investigative bodies of Azerbaijan , which are usually skimp on providing even the most general information about investigation of criminal cases, have been extremely prompt to broadcast on TV channels on Saturday evening [9 March] the "confession" of the NIDA activists arrested two days ago [7 March]. Around a five-minute report showed the footage of interrogations of Baxtiyar Quliyev and Sahin Novruzlu who are being accused by the Prosecutor-General's Office and the Ministry of National Security of illegal possession of drugs and explosives. Periodically, they were asked questions by an investigator. There were no signs of presence of lawyers there. Both young men "confessed" that there were bottles of "Molotov cocktail" and drugs in their homes. It was unclear from the footage where Quliyev had acquired them. However, Novruzlu said that he had taken them from Quliyev. The footage periodically muffled voices of the activists, when they seemed to be mentioning other people's names. The only mentioned name was that of NIDA activist Kanan Qasimli, who according to Novruzlu, invited him [Novruzlu] to join the movement after getting acquainted with him through Facebook. Quliyev testified that they were prepared by NIDA to put up a "violent resistance to the police, and staging a coup". Novruzlu claimed that the drugs and the Molotov cocktails were to be distributed to young people during the protest in Fountain Square on 10 March. The third person involved, Mahammad Azizov said that since ordinary rallies were not efficient, the movement decided to use Molotov cocktails. Judging from video clip, the authorities decided to fully discredit the NIDA movement, whose members have been active during all protests of the past two years; one should expect , more arrests be in the coming few days. Earlier, the parents of the arrested said that drugs and Molotov cocktails were brought to their homes by the people who did the searches [in their homes]. Lawyer Alasgar Mammadli commented on his Facebook page that the TV broadcast of the footage of the suspects' investigation was the violation of the principle of presumption of innocence. [BBCM note: The Azerbaijani National Security Ministry made a statement, saying that the three detained NIDA movement activists had discussed on their Facebook pages the use of Molotov cocktails as well as smoke and signal flares in the 10 March rally against non-combat deaths, private APA news agency reported on 8 March. The ministry statement also said that one of the detainees, Sahin Novruzlu, wrote in his Facebook correspondences that they had made 10 Molotov cocktails and posted video materials on how to make them. Molotov cocktails, drugs and 94,000 manats [119,760 dollars] were found in the detainees' apartments during the search, the ministry statement said.] Original Language: Russian