Anar Mammadli (Məmmədli)

"Before my jail, before this accusation and arrest, I cooperated with international organisations for many years, different institutions including OSCE, ODIHR, European Union, different institutions of the Council of Europe and also international NGOs. I had contact with them, my organisation cooperated with them. I attended their events and also spent some periods of my life on different election observation missions. I was part of some international community, circles, networks. That is why my support was on such a high level, when they launched criminal case against my organisation. Many international groups reacted, responded immediately. They wrote about me, sent letters to UN and different institutions. The same repeated itself, when I was in jail, detention centre. Several times international organisations tried to meet with me. In jail. I was able to meet mainly co-reporters of Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe, once I met with human rights commissioner of the EU and once with the human rights commissioner of Council of Europe - all their missions related to monitoring the human rights situation in Azerbaijan. And I think that the government allowed them to meet me in jail. So I spoke with them to discuss the situation in jail and also generally the human rights situation in the country. I think for me it was easier, because of contacts with them. They also met members of my family. I always felt there was huge international solidarity with us and also morally they supported us."

"In 2023 and always, we were critical about election results. We were not focused on political results of the election, we just focused on quality of the electoral process. How the election process was, with regard to European standards, OSCE standards. Organising of free environmnt, free election process. Free conditions for all stakeholders, including opposition parties, journalists. We talked about it, we assessed the election porcess and we were critical. There were a lot of irregularities, ballot-stuffing, transportation of voters, different type of pressure on election participants, commissions were not independent. We raised these issues. In 2013 we were also very active, more than 600 people observed the elections, they reported to us and we assessed, evaluated and wrote first initial report. After that they started to talk about us. And two weeks later, they launched criminal case against our organisation. And then me and the executive director of the organisation, Mr Bashir Suleimanli, we were invited to the general prosecutor office, and some othe staff members. And they started accusing us of illegal business activity and tax evasion."

"I remember, we were established in 1997 and in 1998 one of the journalists was arrested. Because of his article. This article was not published in the newspaper yet. This article was in the memory of his computer. Police just got information that the newsapaper is going to publish this article. Before publishing of the article they entered the building, searched and found the article. He was jailed for two years and six months. It was of course unjust. It was against rule of law and against freedom of expression. A campaign started and our organisation joined. We started distributing flyers, took part and organised several press conferences. We talked about it in media and made statements. It was our first human rights work. Later that year, 1998, election took place in Azerbaijan, presidential election. It was the second term of Heydar Aliyev, father of the current president. One of the civili society groups invited us to monitor the election. All members of our organisation and also volunteers joined this group and observed election process. First time in my life I became familiar with election process and started to take part in trainings, seminars about election observation amd joined this organisation, this voluntary work. It was very interesting, the election process, I spent three days - day before elections, election day, preparation of the records, review of all complaints, irregularities in election process in polling station, in district election commission. This process somehow attracted me."