The imprisoned French graffiti artist will not be decided on his fate before December 16

He will have to be patient in detention. The appeal hearing initially scheduled for this Monday for Théo Clerc, a French artist detained for graffiti on a metro in Azerbaijan, has been postponed until December 16, announced his lawyer in France, who denounces “opaque” justice. “The hearing is postponed until December 16 at 3 p.m., the reasons given are very vague,” declared Me Margot Fontaine.

“They say that there was a problem with extraction, that the prison services did not extract Théo and that he was not presented to the court of appeal. This seems very vague to us and above all quite erroneous, since Théo told his brother this morning that he had been told that he would not be transferred,” she continued, deploring “this opaque legal treatment which keeps Théo in a very trying situation.

Théo Clerc’s Azerbaijani lawyer, Eltchin Sadygov, for his part confirmed to AFP that his client had “not been brought into the courtroom today”. Aged 38, this artist was sentenced on September 10 to three years of detention for graffiti in the metro while his two co-defendants, a New Zealander and an Australian, were sentenced, for the same acts, to a simple fine.

“He has nothing to do in prison”

The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs has repeatedly protested against his detention, which it considers “arbitrary” and his sentence described as “unfair”. Tensions between France and Azerbaijan have been exacerbated since Baku regained control of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave following a lightning offensive in September 2023, causing the exodus of more than 100,000 people. Armenians.

Baku criticizes Paris’ support for Armenia while French authorities accuse Azerbaijan of interference in its overseas territories, allegations rejected by Baku.

Théo Clerc “must not be hostage to these bad diplomatic relations and we must bring the subject back to what it is, that is to say an individual who painted graffiti on a metro,” said Mr. Fountain. “He has nothing to do in prison, since his two co-artists have not been in prison,” she added. “Their only chance was that they were not French.”