Seven months after his conditional release from prison, opposition politician Ilgar Mammadov is no longer on probation.
On 28 March, the Shaki Court of Appeal suspended his two-year probation period, which had required Mammadov to report to the police every ten days, and lifted his travel ban.
Mammdov, the chair of the REAL political party, was arrested in 2013 on charges of inciting mass violence in a northwestern part of Azerbaijan and sentenced to seven years in jail.
He was conditionally released in August 2018, after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had ruled twice that he had been arrested without reasonable evidence as punishment for his criticism of the government, and that his right to a fair trial according to Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights had been violated.
According to Mammadov’s lawyer Fuad Agayev, his case will soon be taken to the Constitutional Court to expunge Mammadov’s criminal record.
