“GEGHARD”
SCIENTIFIC ANALYTICAL
FOUNDATION
2026
2026
2026-02-20
The protest of Azerbaijani opposition activists in Washington was met with violence and beatings by the security guards of Ilham Aliyev.
On February 19, a group of Azerbaijani protesters attempted to hold a demonstration outside the hotel where Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, was staying. Aliyev was in Washington to attend the first session of the Board of Peace.
Azerbaijani opposition sources released footage of the protest organized by Azerbaijanis living in the United States and critics of the Azerbaijani government. The demonstrators were chanting slogans such as “Freedom for political prisoners” and “Freedom for Tofiq Yagublu.”
“Our goal was simply to hold a peaceful protest in front of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, where Ilham Aliyev was staying, demanding the release of all political prisoners, including persecuted journalists, human rights defenders, the chairman of the Popular Front, Ali Karimli, and Tofiq Yagublu. There was no provocation here,” said Rahim Yagublu, who lives in the United States and is the son of Tofiq Yagublu — a fierce critic of the Aliyev regime who has been sentenced to nine years in prison on fraud charges.
“It is impossible to protest against Ilham Aliyev in the country (Azerbaijan – ed.); freedom of assembly has been banned in Azerbaijan since 2019. We wanted to voice our opinions and slogans abroad as well. Unfortunately, the Azerbaijani authorities and Aliyev’s security guards reacted harshly to this…,” the protester said, stressing that the president’s bodyguards beat participants of the protest and tore his clothes.
It is reported that the Washington Attorney General’s Office has launched an investigation into the incident that took place in front of the hotel.
This is not the first case of violence by the Azerbaijani authorities against opposition figures and critics in recent days. In particular, well-known Azerbaijani journalist Emin Huseynov, who lives in Switzerland, has also reported an attempted attack against him.
“While Ilham Aliyev was speaking about peace at a meeting of the Board of Peace, I was being followed by two men in the center of Geneva… Just a few days earlier, in Munich, Mehriban Aliyeva — Azerbaijan’s First Lady and Vice President — publicly addressed me in a clearly threatening tone, sarcastically wishing me ‘good health.’ I consider what happened to be an attempted assassination. I have grounds to suspect that the Aliyev family is directly linked to this incident,” said Emin Huseynov, who shared a video of the incident on his social media accounts.
According to Huseynov, he had asked Ilham Aliyev to respond to questions from independent media outlets, to which Aliyev replied: “There are no independent media in the world.”
It should be recalled that in 2014, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s Office opened a criminal case against the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety, headed by Emin Huseynov, and banned the journalist from leaving the country. Huseynov was hiding at the Swiss Embassy in Baku and later left Azerbaijan in 2015.
Notably, even while attending the first session of the Board of Peace in the United States, the Azerbaijani president openly demonstrates his “democratic” practices beyond the country’s borders.