Underlining that the 100th anniversary of founder of the modern Azerbaijani state, genius politician and statesman, National Leader of the Azerbaijani people Heydar Aliyev is the landmark event in the history of our country, revering the dear and eternal memory of the Great Leader, remaining committed to his rich spiritual legacy based on universal values, rule of law and justice ideals, reminding about Heydar Aliyev’s exceptional services in implementation of fundamental reforms to build democratic legal state, the importance he attached to safeguarding human rights and freedoms, continuing humanity, compassion and humanitarian traditions, believing that persons to be released from punishment will make their contribution to development of prosperity of our independent state and society, considering the appeals on pardoning to the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan from a group of convicted persons, their family members, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Republic of Azerbaijan, human rights organizations, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Mr. Ilham Aliyev signed an order “On pardoning of a group of convicted persons on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of National Leader of the Azerbaijani people Heydar Aliyev” on May 8, 2023.
Under the order, 801 convicts were pardoned, of whom 463 persons were released from serving their sentence, 220 persons from serving half of the unserved part of their sentence, 118 persons from other punishments unrelated to imprisonment (restriction of liberty, correctional works, fines, conditional sentence).
At the same time, it should be noted that 14 of the pardoned convicts are foreigners. According to the order, 12 of them were released from the full sentence, and two from half of the sentence. According to the relevant verdicts, after release from punishment, forced removal of four foreign convicts outside the borders of the Republic of Azerbaijan is planned. Other foreign convicts are Azerbaijanis by nationality or their family members are citizens of the Republic of Azerbaijan, so, forced removal will not be applied to them.
In addition, 10 convicts were released from punishment based on the appeals of human rights organizations.
Among them were journalist Elchin Mammad, Chairman of the Citizen and Development Party Ali Aliyev, as well as five people were convicted in connection with the Tartar events, and three people were convicted in connection with the Ganja events that occurred in 2018. Taking into account that those persons have served the major part of their sentences, and their behavior during the period of serving their sentence, their family situation and health, a decision was made to pardon them.
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of National Leader of the Azerbaijani people Heydar Aliyev, the Commission on Pardon Issues under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan have held 14 meetings since this January, and about 2,400 documents were discussed at those meetings.
It should be noted that this order is the biggest act on pardoning for the number of people covered ever adopted in the history of the independent Republic of Azerbaijan. For comparison, it should be noted that the Order on Pardoning dated May 24, 2018, adopted on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, was applied to 634 convicts.
The Order on Pardoning adopted on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of National Leader of the Azerbaijani people Heydar Aliyev is planned to be implemented by May 10.