Anar Mammadli, a prominent Azerbaijani human rights defender and election-monitoring expert, was sentenced to 13 years in prison by the Baku Court on Grave Crimes on 7 September 2026, following more than two years in pretrial detention. Mammadli chairs the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre (EMDS), an independent organisation that has monitored elections and documented electoral violations in Azerbaijan for more than two decades. He was convicted on charges including currency smuggling, illegal entrepreneurship, tax evasion and money laundering, while his co-defendant, civic activist Anar Abdullayev, received a 12-year sentence. Human Rights Watch reported that the proceedings were marred by serious due process concerns, including the repeated rejection of defence requests to examine prosecution evidence, question key witnesses in open court and address inconsistencies in the case materials.
The case raises serious concerns regarding the right to a fair trial, liberty and security, freedom of expression and association, and the protection of human rights defenders. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has stated that Mammadli’s prosecution and pretrial detention appeared to be politically motivated and incompatible with Azerbaijan’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. His conviction is particularly concerning given his longstanding election-monitoring work and the fact that the European Court of Human Rights previously found in 2018 that his earlier detention had been intended to silence and punish him for that work. Human rights organisations have also linked his latest prosecution to a broader crackdown on independent civil society, journalists and election monitors in Azerbaijan.
Therefore, as Rights Defenders, we call upon the Azerbaijani authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Anar Mammadli, ensure an independent review of his conviction and guarantee that human rights defenders, election monitors, journalists and civil society organisations can carry out their legitimate activities without intimidation, prosecution or reprisals. We further urge the Council of Europe, the European Union, the United Nations and Azerbaijan’s international partners to use all available legal, diplomatic and accountability mechanisms to demand respect for fundamental rights and the rule of law. The international community must ensure that political and economic cooperation with Azerbaijan does not come at the expense of human rights and the protection of independent civil society.