New evidence presented to the prosecutor in Azerbaijan weakens the prosecution of the human rights lawyer Intigam Aliyev charged with tax evasion, large – scale embezzlement, and illegal entrepreneurship – charges many other human rights activists and journalists are also currently facing in Azerbaijan.
March 17, Intigam Aliyev's lawyer Shahla Gumbatova presented the notarized screenshots of the pages on grant registration from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) website, which were deleted from the Ministry’s website. However Human Rights House Network, an organization closely following the case of Aliyev was able to retrieve cached documents through Google search engine. Gumbatova requested from the prosecutor these new documents are added to the case files.
Baffled by the documents the prosecutor requested time to “study the petition”, said Rovshan Gadjibelli in an interview with Caucasion Knot. Gadjibelli too was monitoring the trial closely since its start.
Aliyev’s attorney Gumbatova said, "while Aliyev is charged with implementing 13 projects without registration of grant contracts, seven of them had been implemented before 2009, when the law did not demand any registration. The remaining six grant contracts were implemented after the due registration at the MoJ".
The new evidence puts prosecution into a difficult position added Gadjibelli.
Intigam Aliyev was arrested August 8 last year and has been in pre-trial detention since.