Azerbaijan: Youth Activist Freed, Then Re-arrested

(Berlin) – Azerbaijani authorities re-arrested a youth activist two weeks after he was pardoned for a bogus drug conviction and freed, Human Rights Watch said today. The activist, Bayram Mammadov, is a member of NIDA (Azeri for “Exclamation Mark”), a youth opposition movement that typically is highly critical of the government. He had been serving the10-year sentence since May 2016 on bogus drug possession charges after spraying satirical graffiti on the monument of a former president. He was released on March 16, 2019 under a presidential pardon. A day before he was rearrested, Mammadov gave an…

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