« Six unmarked cars drove down and hit my parents' vehicle. » On the other end of the phone, Zhala Bayramova describes the arrest in detail. His voice does not tremble. « About twenty men, in civilian clothes and without badges, violently grabbed my father and mother. And both were dragged into two different vehicles. » The scene dates back to July 23, 2023. That day, economics doctor Gubad Ibadoghlu was placed in detention by the Azerbaijani authorities. The start of a long ordeal for this anti-corruption activist, who has become the bête noire of the country's oil and gas industry.
Incarcerated for 274 days while awaiting a judgment, the activist saw his state of health deteriorate greatly over the months. On April 22, 2024, fearing that it would get even worse, the prosecutor's office decided to place him under house arrest. A few days before the opening of the COP 29 in Baku, the man remains deprived of freedoms, confined in his apartment.
Convinced that their father's telephone conversations are being tapped, his daughter, Zhala Bayramova, and his son, Ibad Bayramov, agreed to testify on his behalf to Reporterre. Living in exile, in Sweden and Hungary, both denounce a strategy of muzzling dissident voices in the run-up to the big climate rally. Drawing on his academic work, Dr.r Ibadoghlu risked playing spoilsport and shining the spotlight on his area of expertise: how oil and gas fueled the authoritarianism of this post-Soviet state.
« He knew he was the government's target, so we fled »
Repression of civil society in Azerbaijan intensified in mid-2012, in the run-up to a presidential election. The president, Ilham Aliyev, now in charge of the country for 21 years, wanted to extinguish the beginnings of a popular uprising. This, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, which led to the fall of several heads of state and dictators.
In 2014, authorities opened a first criminal investigation against a « think tank » led by Dr Ibadoghlu, on the transparency of Azerbaijan's public finances. « The threats multipliedtestifies his 26-year-old daughter, a lawyer specializing in human rights. My father knew he was being targeted by the government, so we fled. » First in the United States: in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in Princeton, New Jersey, or at Rutgers University, a stone's throw from New York.
Officially dismissed from the Baku faculty in 2019 due to his overly assertive activism, Gubad Ibadoghlu first taught in Warsaw and Budapest and delivered lectures at Oxford. From 2021, Gubad Ibadoghlu was a research fellow at the London School of Economics, an illustrious British university whose alumni include some 19 Nobel Prize winners and 52 heads of state. This at only 53 years old.
In the summer of 2023, the leaders of a ONG placed under the leadership of the State informed the academic of the abandonment of the proceedings against him. Everyone assured him that he could return to the country without fear. Guarantees also formulated by the government in its exchanges with the Council of Europe, specifies Reporterre his 24-year-old son, Ibad Bayramov: « So he came to the bedside of his mother – my grandmother – suffering from serious health problems and no longer able to walk. He always maintained close ties with her, his father having died when he was 14 years old. »
« Please let us go »
Despite these promises, on July 23, 2023, just a few days after his return to Baku, Dr Ibadoghlu was arrested. « My mother, Irada, did not understand what was happening when the plainclothes police intervened. »says Zhala Bayramova. Immersed in the story of this day, the lawyer describes the cries of Irada, convinced of being the victim of sex traffickers or human beings: « I'm too old for this job. My husband's organs no longer work. Please let us go »she would have said to those who arrested them.
Taken to the unit for combating organized crime, run by the Ministry of the Interior, Irada Bayramova was released 7 hours later. Bruises dotted his legs, neck and shoulders. Even today, his vestibular nerve – useful for maintaining balance and coordinating his gaze – is dysfunctional, his children lament. « She has been hospitalized several times, and the psychological trauma continues to haunt her »adds his son.
According to him, the Azerbaijani authorities wanted to send a message to civil society: to terrorize anyone who would be tempted to oppose the government. On August 19, 2023, the room of Emin, Gubad Ibadoghlu's third child, was ransacked: « The pseudo-burglars only targeted his room, not those of his roommatesdescribed by Ibad Bayramov. No valuables were stolen, only documents and bank statements. » Surely a strategy aimed at intimidating, also, those close to the academic who upset the highest executives of the State, he suggests.
For his part, Gubad Ibadoghlu, the real target of the operation, was transferred to his old apartment. There, following a search, police said they seized $40,000 in cash. A method of compromise inherited from the Soviet era, denounces the activist's son. His father having not set foot in this accommodation for 9 years, he is convinced that the money was placed there by the police themselves: « Four months later, in another case, authorities said they raided the independent newspaper's offices for $40,000 Abzas Media, he mocks. They didn't even bother to change the amount to seem less suspicious. »
« The light in his cell remained on all the time. »
In the official statement of the Azerbaijani Interior Ministry, published the same day, the doctor of economics was accused of making or selling counterfeit money or foreign currencies. Another charge against him concerns the dissemination of extremist religious documents. Gubad Ibadoghlu being described as a supporter of Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish imam whose movement is described as a terrorist organization by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president. « False accusations for which my father risks a 17-year prison sentence »says Ibad Bayramov.
The reason for this incarceration was quite different: to gag the man whose work affected the commercial and financial interests of the State. In May 2023, in the magazine Policy Resourcesthe Dr Ibadoghlu demonstrated how oil hinders democracy in post-Soviet extractivist countries. He also highlighted the hypocrisy of the European Union, having signed an oil and gas memorandum of understanding with Azerbaijan in July 2022 to emancipate itself from Vladimir Putin's Russia. Or how « abandon an authoritarian country to cooperate with another »he joked.
Beyond the economist, Gubad Ibadoghlu is also a father « devoted »to the « flawless morality ». For having criticized the offensive of the Azerbaijani army in the Armenian territories of Nagorno-Karabakh, his daughter, Zhala Bayramova was the victim of a wave of death threats: « [Mon père] could have adopted a nationalist posture to secure numerous political supports. Instead, he published a long Facebook post calling on all my harassers to shut up. » She remembers her relief at seeing him arrive at her home in Lund, Sweden: « He took the first plane to accompany me to file a complaint. Then he got some cameras and installed them around my door. »
According to his son's testimony, Gubad Ibadoghlu had no access to clothing or medicine for the first seven days of his detention. He was deprived of drinking water for a month. Visits were refused to him, as were telephone calls. « And the light in his cell remained on constantly, day and night, to exhaust him psychologically. »enrage Ibad Bayramov.
« The state is holding him hostage »
In an emergency resolution, adopted on April 25, 2024, the European Parliament recognized that the prisoner's state of health had deteriorated. « considerably deteriorated (…) as a result of torture, inhumane conditions of detention and denial of adequate medical care, putting his life in danger ». A position supported two months later by a cardiologist from the United States, in a letter sent to the European Court of Human Rights: it demanded emergency intervention in the face of the victim's high risk of heart attack.
Faced with this growing international pressure, the academic's pre-trial detention ended after 274 days behind bars. The activist suffers from partial vision loss, diabetic polyneuropathy, deposits in the gallbladder and nodules in the thyroid gland. His trial has been suspended indefinitely. However, today he still remains under house arrest and is not authorized to leave the territory to receive the necessary care: « The state is holding him hostage »says his 24-year-old son.
While the COP29 begins Monday, November 11, the fate of the activist – already supposed to take up a new teaching position at the Royal Polytechnic in Dresden, Germany – remains uncertain. Amnesty International calls on the leaders of member states toHIM to demand his immediate and unconditional release during their negotiations. A request already made by the European Union in September 2023. In vain. « As of October 2024, Azerbaijan had 319 political prisonerssay his children. However, we are not afraid to raise our voices. We firmly believe that we will eventually secure our father's release. »
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