Afghan Mukhtarli: Kvirikashvili is behind my kidnapping

Baku/08.02.18/Turan: "My arrest was a concrete political order. It was a kidnapping. The governments of Azerbaijan and Georgia have long hunted me, and finally kidnapped in Georgia, and brought here," said the journalist Afgan Mukhtarly, who was released from prison for two days to participate in the commemoration of his relatives. He noted that he was abducted in Tbilisi and when he was untied, he saw that he was already at a border post in Balaken district of Azerbaijan. The trial, according to which he was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment journalist called the farce.

"For our evidence has not been accepted, the petitions are rejected. It was not possible to request records from video surveillance cameras on the Georgian and Azerbaijani sides. The investigation alleging that I illegally crossed the border did not provide any evidence. The perpetrators of the frontier were perjury against me. Among them there are two Lieutenant Colonel-Assistant Chief of the State Border Service Elchin Guliyev and Assistant Commander of the Border Forces, General Askerov," Mukhtarli said.

He also said that he does not believe in the suicide of Mehman Galandarov, who was also in political emigration in Georgia, and almost immediately was arrested on his return from Baku. "... I believe that he was killed. I have been friends with him for a long time. Knowing his character, I can not believe that he committed suicide," Mukhtarly said. In his view, the arrest and death of Galandarov, the arrest of Gezal Bayramli and the pressure on Dashgyn Agalarov testifies to the surveillance of Azerbaijani activists in Georgia.

The journalist does not believe that the investigation into his abduction in Georgia will be objective. Although several officials of the Georgian border service were suspended from the duties for the investigation period, no real investigation was conducted. So, the investigation did not provide a recording from the CCTV cameras on the way of Mukhtarli's movement during his capture in the vicinity of the house where he lived.

"Although the President of Georgia has repeatedly said about kidnapping me, Prime Minister Georgy Kvirikashvili wants to hush up this matter. For it is he who is behind this crime," Mukhtarly said. Mukhtarly does not complain about the conditions of detention in the pre-tria; detention center taking into account the standards of Azerbaijan. According to him, in the pre-trial detention center the attitude to him was always good, and the ward was clean. -03B-