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Azerbaijan

June 22, 2007  Baptist pastor still held on false charges

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=979
Imprisoned Baptist pastor Zaur Balaev has been held for over a month by Azerbaijan, on charges which witnesses insist are false, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Pastor Balaev was arrested on 20 May, and the authorities intend to bring criminal charges of resisting officials with violence. The arrest took place during a police raid on a worship service which they insist - against Azerbaijan's international human rights commitments - was illegal as the church does not have state registration. The authorities have been denying the church legal status for 13 years. Since being detained over a month ago, "Zaur's health has deteriorated seriously" the head of the Baptist Union Ilya Zenchenko told Forum 18. Zenchenko also stated that police had hit Balaev in the face and that since his arrival in prison he has been threatened with violence. The Balaev family has had to go into debt to pay to take food to Zaur Balaev, who has been held over 250 km. (150 miles) from his home. The authorities have denied Balaev's family the opportunity to meet him since his arrest. Officials have refused to discuss the charges with Forum 18.

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July 26, 2006   Jehovah's Witness conscientious objector sentenced 

http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=818 

Mushfiq Mammedov, a Jehovah's Witness conscientious objector has been given a six month suspended jail sentence and intends to appeal against this, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. He was sentenced for refusing compulsory military service - even though the country's Constitution guarantees the right to alternative service, and not allowing this breaches its Council of Europe commitments. "My son has done nothing wrong - he's not guilty," his mother Sevil Najafova told Forum 18 "He told the Military Commissariat he's prepared to do alternative unarmed service in line with his religious beliefs." A spokesperson for the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations, defended the sentence. "Our law says every young man must join the army, so this sentence is correct," he told Forum 18. The OSCE has noted that "a constitutional right would be meaningless if the government recognized a right to alternative service only after it had initiated the promulgation of a law."