“GEGHARD”
SCIENTIFIC ANALYTICAL
FOUNDATION
2026
2026
2026-05-12
The Supreme Court of Azerbaijan concluded its review of the cassation appeal filed by Azerbaijani opposition figure Tofig Yagublu on April 2, 2026. The court found no legal violations in the previous ruling sentencing Yagublu to nine years in prison; accordingly, the appeal was rejected.
The opposition figure was last arrested on December 14, 2023, in the Baku metro. The following day, he was formally charged. Yagublu and his associate Elnur Mammedov were accused under several articles of Azerbaijan’s Criminal Code, including fraud causing large-scale damage, forgery of official documents, and the use of forged documents. The Narimanov District Court in Baku imposed a four-month pretrial detention measure on them, which was repeatedly extended. All motions submitted by the defense lawyers requesting a change of the preventive measure were rejected. The trial, which began on June 14, 2024, concluded on March 10, 2025, and Yagublu was sentenced to nine years of imprisonment.
Pressure on Yagublu
Tofig Yagublu is a former deputy chairman of the opposition Musavat Party and a senior member of the opposition coalition National Council of Democratic Forces. Yagublu also previously worked as a journalist for the Azerbaijani newspaper Yeni Musavat. He is a veteran of the Nagorno-Karabakh War.
On numerous occasions, he participated in peaceful protests against the authorities and has given interviews criticizing the government of Azerbaijan and the Aliyev family over human rights violations and corruption.
Tofig Yagublu was first arrested in 1998. He was charged with participating in an unauthorized protest and disobeying police orders, and was sentenced to a two-year suspended prison term. In April 2011, Yagublu was arrested for participating in a peaceful demonstration demanding democratic reforms and free and fair elections. In May 2012, he was again arrested on charges related to participation in protests and subjected to administrative punishment, despite the fact that he had not directly participated in the demonstrations.
In January 2013, this prominent critic of the Aliyev regime was arrested on charges of organizing riots in Ismayilli and sentenced to five years in prison.
Even after receiving a pardon and being released under a decree issued by President Ilham Aliyev, Yagublu continued his opposition activities. In October 2019, he was once again arrested while participating in a peaceful protest, accused of not obeying police orders. According to reports, law enforcement officers subjected him to physical and psychological violence and threatened to kill his son.
As legal experts have noted, in March 2020 Yagublu was arrested on fabricated charges and sentenced to four years and three months in prison. He was later transferred to house arrest and was conditionally released early in July 2021.
In December 2021, Yagublu, together with several demonstrators, was violently detained during a peaceful protest demanding the release of imprisoned opposition activist Saleh Rustamov. According to Human Rights Watch, Yagublu was severely beaten by law enforcement officers, sustained multiple injuries, and was released after being subjected to administrative penalty.
The opposition figure was again arrested in December 2022 and sentenced to 30 days of detention for protesting the imprisonment of another activist. Despite repeated arrests and periods of detention, Tofig Yagublu continued speaking out about the corrupt practices of the Azerbaijani authorities and the human rights situation in Azerbaijan. Before the February 2024 presidential election, Yagublu made public statements almost daily criticizing the Azerbaijani government.
As a result, Yagublu has remained in detention since December 14, 2023, and following the April 2, 2026 ruling, his nine-year prison sentence was left unchanged. His daughter, Nigar Hazi, described the decision of the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan as politically motivated. According to her, as an act of revenge by Ilham Aliyev, her father was transferred from his prison cell to solitary confinement for seven days after a protest took place in Washington on February 19, 2026, near the hotel hosting Aliyev. The protest, attended by his brother Rahim Yagublu, included chants of “freedom for political prisoners” and “freedom for Yagublu.”
From the outset, Yagublu expressed confidence that he would not receive a fair trial in Azerbaijan and demanded the rapid completion of domestic legal proceedings in order to appeal to international judicial bodies.
Some responses from International and human rights organizations
At the beginning of 2025, the number of political prisoners in Azerbaijan was around 400. By the beginning of 2026, the names of 340 political prisoners had been recorded. Over the past two decades, various international and local organizations have repeatedly stated that the Azerbaijani authorities have sought to silence any manifestation of opposition through persecution and unfounded charges against journalists, human rights defenders, and individual critics of the government.
Commenting on the 2021 protests and particularly the conduct of law enforcement officers toward Yagublu, Human Rights Watch Deputy Europe and Central Asia Director Giorgi Gogia stated that the Azerbaijani authorities had used violence against demonstrators in order to suppress dissent. He called on the Azerbaijani authorities to conduct an immediate, impartial, and thorough investigation into the actions of law enforcement bodies. Gogia described the treatment of Yagublu as “an attack on the rights of the individual and on the right to peaceful assembly.”
On July 11, 2024, shortly after the start of Yagublu’s trial, the international human rights organizations Gibson, «Dunn & Crutcher LLP» and TrialWatch submitted allegation letters to several United Nations Special Rapporteurs, expressing concern over the case of Tofig Yagublu.
On October 17, 2024, the UN Special Rapporteurs on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and the independence of judges and lawyers sent a communication to Baku expressing concern regarding the arrest, pre-trial detention, and prosecution of Tofig Yagublu.
In March 2025, Amnesty International described Tofig Yagublu’s sentence as “another grim milestone in Azerbaijan’s campaign against government critics.”
Another international human rights organization, the Clooney Foundation for Justice, through its TrialWatch initiative, published a report ahead of the Supreme Court’s April 2 ruling, stating that Yagublu’s trial process had been politically motivated and marked by numerous procedural violations. The report concluded that the criminal prosecution carried out against Tofig Yagublu between 2023 and 2025 violated international fair trial rights guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The case of Tofig Yagublu, however, is only one example of how Baku disregards the reports and demands of authoritative international organizations. In 2017, following an official visit to Azerbaijan, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders concluded that numerous human rights defenders and members of dozens of civil society organizations in the country had been subjected to administrative and criminal prosecution, as well as arbitrary detention. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention likewise found that human rights defenders, journalists, political figures, and religious leaders in Azerbaijan are regularly detained on criminal or administrative charges.
The European Court of Human Rights has reached similar conclusions in numerous cases brought against Azerbaijan, describing the situation as alarming. On September 14, 2023, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for sanctions and condemning Azerbaijan for “serious violations of human rights and democracy.”
Amnesty International noted that the situation in Azerbaijan further deteriorated particularly during the February 2024 elections and the preparations for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku (COP29). During this period, the organization described the arrests of opposition figures as a “continued consolidation of authoritarian practices.”
In October 2024, Human Rights Watch published a report on the intensification of repression against human rights defenders, journalists, and other government critics in Azerbaijan. By the end of 2024, according to reports, employees of 13 media outlets in Azerbaijan had been imprisoned on politically motivated grounds.
In its 2025 resolution on Azerbaijan, the European Parliament condemned the “criminalization of freedom of expression” and called on the Azerbaijani authorities to “end the repression against journalists, activists, academics, opposition representatives, human rights defenders, and other individuals unlawfully detained.”
Despite these and numerous other documented cases, the Azerbaijani authorities continue to demonstrate an unyielding approach toward politically motivated repression against journalists, public figures, including women, and other activists.