FP: Azerbaijani human rights activist spent 6 months in Swiss embassy after not receiving help from US Embassy

An Azerbaijani dissident married to a U.S. servicewoman has spent the last half-year living in the Swiss embassy in Baku, denied protection by the American embassy there. The 35-year-old human rights defender Emin Huseynov has long been persecuted by the authoritarian government of Ilham Aliyev and since August 2014 has been hosted by the Swiss embassy for humanitarian reasons after he went into hiding last summer, fearing his arrest was imminent, reports the article published on Foreign Policy site.

According to Foreign Policy the Swiss television show “Rundschau” broke the news and the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the information. Huseynov was the chairman of the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS), a local NGO, and after the break out of the repressions against the freedom of speech and the civil society as a result of which the activists and human rights defenders were arrested he decided to hide, as he was afraid for his life.

Referring to its own sources the site writes that Huseynov’s bank accounts were first frozen in June, and yet Huseynov was still able to leave the country, which he did to attend a session at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg where he and Jafarov put on an event exposing Aliyev’s suffocation of civil society in Azerbaijan. After Jafarov was detained, Huseynov sensed the net closing on him. In early August, Huseynov attended an event at the U.S. embassy in Baku where he eventually found himself alone with the Chargé d’Affaires Dereck Hogan. Huseynov scribbled a note on a piece of paper which he passed to Hogan: “What kind of assistance can you provide me? I am in danger of arrest.” Hogan said he couldn’t help. One source who requested anonymity said that Huseynov never had a bad relationship with Hogan. He never criticized the embassy and tried to be diplomatic even when he criticized U.S. policy in Azerbaijan.

“On August 6, Huseynov tried to leave the country to receive medical treatment in Turkey, but was stopped by border control and turned back. The day after that, August 8, colleagues from his office called to inform him that the headquarters of IRFS was being surveilled by state security, and warned Huseynov not to come to work. The office was then raided, prompting rumors in the Azerbaijani press that Huseynov had been arrested. Instead, he went into hiding, which only amplified speculation as to his whereabouts. Press reports said he had fled to the U.S. embassy, which on August 12 put out a statement denying that it was harboring him,” the article reads and notes that the U.S. mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe issued a blanket statement on August 14 calling on Baku to “halt the continuing arrests of peaceful activists, to stop freezing organizations’ and individuals’ bank accounts, and to release those who have been incarcerated in connection with the exercise of their fundamental freedoms,” mentioning the Yunuses, Jafarov, and Huseynov by name.

“The fact that Huseynov, while not a U.S. citizen himself, has an American wife ought to have made his case more of a priority to the State Department, according to human rights monitors and one ex-diplomat,” the article reads and notes that according to statements a few European countries allegedly offered to take Huseynov in; he opted for Switzerland, owing to its embassy’s proximity to his hideout.

According to one of the sources Huseynov had totally changed his physical appearance, he dyed his hair, wore a disguise. He even did test runs: he’d go out in disguise to see if people recognized him. On August 18, he made a play for the embassy grounds. A car driven by an Azeri confidante, who evidently had to flee the country after his identity was uncovered, dropped him off a few blocks away. The authorities were aware that Huseynov was attempting refuge in a foreign country and had begun staking out embassy entrances in Baku. Emin was walking to the embassy and realized there are tons of plainclothes cops.
They tried to talk to him. He spoke to them in broken English to try and throw them off. They asked to see his passport. But he said, the Swiss have my passport. They didn’t recognize him at first. He rang the doorbell to the embassy, as the cops were still interrogating him. Someone opened the door and pulled him inside.

“Huseynov would spend the next several months living on Swiss soil in his native country, flanked by a 24-hour police cordon of the embassy. The Aliyev government has not publicly acknowledged his presence in the Swiss embassy, although they’ve been negotiating with the Aliyev government for Huseynov’s safe passage out of Azerbaijan,” the publication reports.

Giorgi Gogia, the South Caucasus specialist at Human Rights Watch, told the Foreign Policy that he knew that the Swiss government has been negotiating at the highest level possible with Azerbaijan. And Azerbaijan government has been against letting Huseynov leave.

As noted in the article Huseynov’s safe conduct out of the country is particularly critical because the last time he was arrested in 2008 — for attending a party celebrating the birthday of Che Guevara — he was beaten by police so badly he wound up in intensive care and had to be treated for head and brain trauma.

“Very suddenly, from a very bad human rights record, Azerbaijan turned into a closed-country human rights record. It was really hard and shocking to see how fast the country was closing down,” Gogia noted.