Azerbaijan | EPDE Co-founder Anar Mammadli Sentenced to 13 Years of Imprisonment

Today, a court sentenced human rights defender and election observer Anar Mammadli to 13 years imprisonment in Azerbaijan.

Anar has been held since 29 April 2024. The charges were then expanded in March 2025. The term handed down is the longest possible under the charges brought.

What Anar Mammadli did is a matter of public record: he co-founded the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre, the only independent election watchdog in Azerbaijan and a founding member of EPDE, and built a network that deployed more than 1’000 domestic observers. He served with the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) across Europe and Central Asia. 

He is a recipient of the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize, awarded to him by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in 2014 whilst he was serving his first sentence. In February 2024, his organisation documented irregularities in the presidential election. Later that year, he co-founded the Climate of Justice Initiative to open space for public participation ahead of COP29 Azerbaijan. He was arrested six months before that summit.

This is the second time Azerbaijan has imprisoned him for the same work (and sentenced based on the same charges): the European Court of Human Rights found that his 2013 detention was intended to silence and punish him for election monitoring. Azerbaijan has still not complied fully with that judgment. A state that ignores a binding ruling and then repeats the conduct the Court condemned is testing whether the Council of Europe’s supervision means anything at all. Silence from the Council of Europe’s leadership on this arrest and this sentence today will stain the institution.

We are alarmed that Anar Mammadli’s health has deteriorated continuously in custody since September 2024. He lives with a slipped disc, arthritis and bronchitis.

He is one of many: journalists, lawyers and civil society leaders are being prosecuted in Azerbaijan on charges that track their work rather than any offence. Just today, another human rights defender, Anar Abdulla, was sentenced to 12 years on charges linked to those brought against Anar Mammadli.

EPDE calls for his immediate and unconditional release, for the quashing of his conviction, and for guaranteed access to independent medical care for as long as he remains in detention. 

We call on the Council of Europe, the European Union, and the United Nations human rights mechanisms to make his release a condition of engagement with Azerbaijan, including in view of the European Political Community summit Baku is due to host in 2028.