Sentence Of Afgan Mukhtarli

EDM number 829 in 2017-19, proposed by Ian Austin on 19/01/2018.
Categorised under the topics of Administration of justice, Eastern Europe, Human rights, Middle East and Prisons.

That this House deplores the six year prison term imposed by a court in Azerbaijan on the investigative journalist Afgan Mukhtarli, who was kidnapped in Georgia on 29 May 2017, and held in prison for six months before being brought to trial; notes that as an act of additional cruelty, the Azerbaijani authorities apparently intend to refuse Mr Mukhtarli permission to attend the funeral of his sister and her two young children who died in a domestic tragedy attributed to a carbon monoxide leak from a gas oven on 31 December 2017; further notes the concern expressed by the US State Department, and by the EU spokesperson for Foreign Affairs, over Mr Mukhtarli's imprisonment; and calls on the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to remind the Azerbaijan Government that an attack on press freedom and human liberty such as this constitutes a flagrant breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

This motion has been signed by a total of 8 MPs.