Azerbaijan Urges European Parliament to Respect Legal Standards on Leyla Yunus and Nagorno-Karabakh

BAKU, Azerbaijan, December 5, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

The Chairman of the Azerbaijani Delegation to the Euronest PA, Elkhan Suleymanov, has urged his European colleagues to respect legal standards covering two issues of importance to Azerbaijan: the criminal case against activist Leyla Yunus and the continued Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding territories.

In a bid to clarify what he says are inconsistencies on the part of the European Parliament (EP) in both areas, he has written to its President Martin Schulz challenging him for answers.

Firstly, Suleymanov asked Schulz to clarify his November call for accused fraudster Yunus to be released "without delay". This, he said, "disrespects judgments of the (Azerbaijani) courts" given she is midway through a serious treason and corruption case, something that wouldn't happen if an EU nation was involved.

"Could any prominent public and political figure demand to release a person who is (being) investigated in the European zone?" he asked in an open letter. "Certainly, the reaction would be negative. Then why do you apply this model to Azerbaijan?"

Suleymanov said he is also concerned about "international legal standards" being ignored by the European Parliament over the issue of the Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding territories.

Despite the fact that the invasion more than two decades ago and the continued occupation have in the past been deemed unlawful by a number of international organisations, including the United Nations Security Council and the European Parliament, such bodies are now reluctant to call to account the aggressor state.

Schulz said in 2012, "I hope that Armenia and Azerbaijan will overcome their difficult conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh," and last year added that they should solve it "themselves".

Suleymanov wrote that this shows he has forgotten "about the importance of liberating the Azerbaijani territories from armed Armenian occupation within the framework of internationally legal standards."

He said bodies such as the EP should be just as concerned about the violation of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity at the hands of Armenia as they have been of Ukraine's loss of territorial integrity at the hands of pro-Russian separatists.

In the spring of 2014 the EU joined the United States in imposing tough sanctions on Russia as punishment for its involvement in the Ukrainian crisis.