A total of 127 people are currently imprisoned on politically motivated grounds, according to an updated list of political prisoners published by the Working Group for a Unified List of Political Prisoners in Azerbaijan on 20 February.
The list includes 67 religious believers, 18 political and civic activists, 14 people arrested for participating in protests, nine journalists and bloggers, eight religious believers from
Said Dadashbayli’s group
, four relatives of politicians, three people with excessive life sentences, two former state officials as well as a poet and a human rights defender.
In September 2018, the unified list
counted
128 political prisoners.
The Working Group For a Unified List of Political Prisoners includes former political prisoners, journalists and rights activists, such as Intigam Aliyev, Anar Mammadli, Rasul Jafarov, Khadija Ismayil and Rovshan Hajibayli. They examine the cases of people considered to be political prisoners and regularly publish reports with information about them.
The Azerbaijani government denies the existence of political prisoners in the country.
