Qiyas Ibrahimov, arrested on May 10th on bogus drug charges, wrote a letter to his lawyer Elçin Sadiqov describing the torture he was subjected to while in police custody. However, employees at Baku Temporary Detention Facility took the document away from him before he was able to hand it over to his lawyer who later wrote on his personal Facebook page:
“I went to the Baku Temporary Detention Facility today in order to see my clients. I was able to meet with both of them. Qiyas Ibrahimov had written about the torture he had been subjected to. However, the document had been taken from him. Despite my objections and my demands to have the document returned, the employees of the Facility did not pay attention to me and refused to return the confiscated document. I was forced to ask Qiyas to describe to me what had happened to him, and later to create an account based off my notes. He requested that I broadcast his account of how he had been tortured while in police custody and in the Prosecutor’s office. He hopes that based off this account, an investigation may be conducted to find out who did this to him.”
Elcin Sadiqov, writing in the name of Qiyas Ibrahimov:
“Sometime in the afternoon on May 10th, 2016, while I was coming out of an exam on the second campus of Baku’s Slavonic University, I had gone about 30 steps from the exit when I received a heavy blow to the head. I staggered from the force of the blow, and immediately felt a second one, after which I fell forward on the ground onto my face and mouth.
I was picked up quickly from the ground and stuffed into a blue truck. The driver and the several men on both sides of me were in civilian clothing. They wanted to know why I had written on the statue. They started beating me and cursing at me.
The car arrived at the Baku Municipal Police Department. It was only on my arrival there that I understood that this was the police. They pushed me out of the car, into the building and forced me into a large room of the Department. They started beating me again right then and there.
While beating me, they threw heavy insults at me. They essentially beat me everywhere, but mostly on the face with their palms and the back of their hands. They also hit me from behind on the neck.
I could feel that I was losing consciousness from the blows. They handcuffed my hands behind my back. They poured water on my head, but I fainted. They woke me up, and told me: “we’ve called two witnesses. We will now take narcotics from off your person, and they will see it.”
They put something in the left pocket of my waistcoat. This was the first time I had ever seen anything resembling drugs. I have never even smoked a cigarette.
I told them that, of course, everything they had planted on me was not mine, and that they had put it on me while I had been unconscious. They started beating me again.
It was excruciating.
After beating me for several minutes more, they took me into a room on the other side of the hall. In this room I saw Bayram. They were hitting him as well. I wanted to scream and call out to him, but they covered my mouth and struck me on the head. They hit me in the stomach, too.
My voice failed, and they took Bayram out of the room. They started beating me again and demanded that I apologize to the statue and place a flower in front of it. They told me that AzTV would come and record me in the act. I refused. They then demanded that I accept the narcotics charges.
I refused, and they continued hitting me.
They took off my pants and approached me with a bat. They threatened to ‘act immorally’ on me with the bat – that is, to rape me.
Frightened, I accepted the drug charges. Then they told me that they would go to my house and find more drugs – and that I would confess to the possession of whatever they ‘found.’
I told them that I had not put narcotics anywhere. With irony, one of them told me: “You didn’t, but we will. And then we’ll find it, and you’ll confess that it is yours. If not, we’ll stick you parents in jail, too.”
They stuffed me into a car and drove me to my one – room apartment. As soon as my mother opened the door they filed inside. They put drugs under my mother’s bed and afterwards shouted, “Here it is! Here it is! We found it!”
My mother was severely frightened. I tried talking to her. I wanted to explain to her that this was purely political. But they didn’t give me the chance to speak with her. They immediately stuffed me back into the car and drove me back to Baku’s Municipal Police Department.
They beat me on the way there. They grabbed me by the hair and spit at me.
After arriving back at the Department, they placed a self – incriminating statement before me that indicted me of obtaining drugs from an Iranian citizen by the name of Akram.
This when I’ve never seen, been acquainted with or even heard of such a person. Later, they brought me to the office of the chief officer, Mirqafar Seyidov. My hands were handcuffed behind my back.
One of the people in the room told me to sit. As I made to sit, Mirqafar Seyidov told me that those brought before him people don’t sit, but kneel.
One of the men that had brought me into the room kicked my knees from behind and forced me to the ground. While trying to stand, a bald man standing next to Seyidov (who had introduced himself as a ‘statesman’) ordered that my belt be taken off.
Holding me by my beard and hair, they took off my belt and started whipping and humiliating me with it.
They asked me whom I had taken the order from to wrote on the statue, who my accomplices were and why I had gone through with the act.
I told them, “We want democracy. Without it, we will always protest.” Seyidov, with a loud voice told me: “Hah, what democracy!?” He told me: “None of your relatives have fought in Karabakh, but I myself have injured my foot [there].”
This conversation, frequently interrupted by the infliction of pain, lasted about one hour.
Then they took me to the Temporary Detention Center of Narimanov District Police Department.
There, the chief officer approached me and said, “You’re the one that drew on the statue, aren’t you?” and hit me. I fell down. Others fells upon me, and I against lost consciousness. I lost feeling completely in my body and was paralyzed.
They brought me to a holding cell.
In the morning, they brought me out into the yard of the Temporary Decenter Center and told me to sweep the yard. I refused, and they beat me.
Ever part of my body was in pain. They forced me to clean the yard and pick up cigarette butts. They forced me to clean the toilet. They took pictures of me and laughed at me in the process.
These forms of torture and other inhumane acts continued on and on.
On the 12th of May of 2016, they repeated their demand that I clean the yard and pick up the cigarette butts. This time, however, my lawyer was in the yard and saw that I had been subjected to torture by the lesions and other abrasions on my body.
When he saw this, he objected to the chief officer of the TDC. They forced him to leave the compound.
At my judicial hearing on May 12th, 2016, I told the judge that I had been tortured while in prison. He ordered that the origin of these bodily injuries should be investigated.
However, instead of investigating their origin, I was brought back to their origin – the Narimanov District Police Department, where the torture began again until I was brought to the Baku Temporary Detention Center again.
My head hurts, and especially my bones.”