AZERBAIJAN (ANS) -- A motion to have Baptist prisoner of conscience Hamid Shabanov freed while a criminal investigation against him continues has been rejected, Azerbaijan Baptists told Forum 18 News Service.

Azerbaijan is located in Southwestern Asia, bordering the Caspian Sea, between Iran and Russia, with a small European portion north of the Caucasus range.

But Felix Corley of the Forum 18 News Service reported that Baptists welcome Shabanov’s transfer to Balakan District, in north-western Azerbaijan, which is next to Shabanov's home region.

Local Baptists think that the police and courts in his home district of Zakatala – which have a long history of punishing local religious minorities for peacefully practicing their faith - will not treat Shabanov fairly.

Meanwhile, Muslim prisoner Said Dadashbeyli has failed in his appeal to the Supreme Court in the capital Baku, the last possible avenue of appeal within Azerbaijan. “We are now preparing to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg,” family members told Forum 18.

Forum 18 said the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations in Baku refused to answer questions on either case. When Forum 18 called the State Committee, the woman who answered the phone of spokesperson Yagut Alieva told Forum 18 that Alieva was on leave. She declined to answer any questions.

Forum 18 said that Ilya Zenchenko, head of Azerbaijan's Baptist Union, has pledged that the fight to have criminal charges against Shabanov dropped will continue. At a hearing on Aug. 22, which was called without informing Shabanov, his family or his defense lawyer, Zakatala District Court ordered that he be held in prison for a further two months while the investigation continues. The judge had previously ordered a re-investigation to be complete by Aug. 23, ready for a new trial.

“The judge called the latest hearing without even informing Hamid's lawyer,” Zenchenko of the Baptist Union told Forum 18.

He added, “This was a clear violation.”

The defense's request that Shabanov be freed pending possible trial was rejected.

Foum 18 said that Shabanov – who leads a Georgian-speaking Baptist congregation in the village of Aliabad just outside Zakatala – is facing charges that he held an illegal weapon, charges his family and congregation insist are fabricated. He was arrested during a police raid on his home on June 20, and has been held since then. His trial began in Zakatala on July 22, but a week later the judge referred the case back to the prosecutor for further investigation.

Forum 18 said that Shabanov's supporters have achieved some success.

“We insisted that they take the investigation away from the Zakatala District as we don't trust the investigators and the court in that district,” Zenchenko stated. He said the case has now been moved to the neighboring Balakan District, just north of Zakatala. “Hamid is now being held at the police station in Balakan, and this is where any trial will now take place.”

According to Forum 18, Zenchenko complains that Shabanov's family have not been allowed to visit him. “Only his lawyer is allowed in, though the family can pass on food and letters for him.”

The family of Muslim prisoner Said Dadashbeyli told Forum 18 that Judge Nariman Huseinov at Azerbaijan's Supreme Court in Baku rejected his appeal against his conviction for terrorism-related offences.

Dadashbeyli is a 32-year-old, Baku-based Muslim teacher who received a 14-year sentence at a closed trial in Dec. 2007.

Forum 18 said his lawyer and family insist that he and eight of the 15 people sentenced with him are innocent of the terrorism-related charges which he is facing. Dadashbeyli founded an Islamic group called Nima in 2005 and, his family say, promoted a “European style of Islam,”mutual respect and unity between Shias (the largest Muslim tendency in Azerbaijan) and Sunnis, and rejected fundamentalism.

Dadashbeyli filed his Supreme Court appeal back in March, though his lawyer Elchin Gambarov told Forum 18 that he and Dadashbeyli had “no illusions” about the way the Supreme Court decision would go.

Forum 18 said that since late Aug., on orders from the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations, police have prevented Muslim worshipers from praying outside mosques throughout Azerbaijan.

These moves come as police raided a Jehovah's Witness meeting in a private home in Mingachevir in western Azerbaijan on Sept. 6, the latest in a series of raids over the past year on Jehovah's Witness meetings and communities of other faiths in various parts of the country.

Forum 18 said other religious groups are also experiencing problems.

In Aug., a Baku-based Protestant charismatic church, Cathedral of Praise, which claims 800 adult members, had its place of worship confiscated. The church bought the almost 1100-square foot site and building legally from a private company that owned them in 2004, receiving a state document confirming ownership. The church says it then invested a lot of energy and money turning the building into its place of worship.

Forum 18 said that an oil firm which had previously owned the site before the other company, then claimed that it had owned the site when the church bought it. The oil firm brought the case to court in 2007, claiming the company that had sold the site to the church did not have the right to do so. The church lost both the initial hearing and its appeal. No compensation is being offered. Court bailiffs forced the church to vacate the building on Aug. 22.

“We appealed to the Presidential Administration and they sent us to State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations. They said that they don't deal with such issues and told us to go to ‘corresponding organs,’” one church member told Forum 18. “This situation is not our fault; we paid for everything.”

Pastor Rasim Halilov told Forum 18, “We're not one hundred percent sure that this is targeted at us because of our faith, but it is a violation of our rights.”

He said the church now has to meet in the basement of a building it also owns on the neighboring portion of land.

Forum 18 said the church was founded in 1994, but only managed to gain registration in 1999. Its Swedish pastor, Mats-Jan Söderberg, had his visa application denied in 2005 and was given two weeks to leave Azerbaijan. He was subsequently prohibited from returning.

For more background information see Forum 18's Azerbaijan religious freedom survey at www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=92. 

Editor's note from Dan Wooding. By way of clarification, ANS has received written permission from Forum 18 New Service to re-work any of their stories so they may reach an even wider audience.

Jeremy Reynalds is a freelance writer and the founder and CEO of Joy Junction, New Mexico's largest emergency homeless shelter, http://www.joyjunction.org He has a master's degree in communication from the University of New Mexico, and a Ph.D. in intercultural education from Biola University in Los Angeles. His newest book is "The Face of Homelessness." Additional details are available at http://www.HomelessBook.com. Reynalds' upcoming book is "We All Need a Little Help." It will be released on October 3 2008. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For more information contact: Jeremy Reynalds at jeremyreynalds@comcast.net. Tel: (505) 400-7145. Note: A higher resolution JPEG picture of Jeremy Reynalds is available on request from Dan Wooding at danjuma1@aol.com.