By NICK PATON WALSH
The Guardian
Opposition activists in Azerbaijan accuse America of double standards on rights
Mehdi, still hobbling after nine months, likened the torture to having his “brain pulled out by a magnet”.
Strapped to an electric chair inside the bowels of the Azerbaijani police’s organised crime unit, metal panels were put under his feet, he said. A plastic bib was tied to his front, and headphones with earpieces like the metal tip of a doctor’s otoscope were put inside his ears.
His masked interrogators gave him one last chance to denounce the Musavat opposition party he supported, and then switched on the current, he said.
“My nose was gushing blood down the bib. My eyes felt like they had leapt out of my head. My tongue was forced out of my mouth by the current. I thought my teeth would split open. And I felt like my bladder, bowels and stomach would empty.”
After the second burst of electricity, he lost consciousness. He recalls waking up on a couch in the same room, with a doctor giving him cardiopulmonary resuscitation. “I felt like I was floating, like I was dead,” he said.
Mehdi’s chief interrogator began to beat him again. “Do you want to die here?” he asked. Only the doctor held him back.
Nearly two weeks later, Mehdi, who asked for his real name not to be used, was released.
His torture, documented by Human Rights Watch, is one example of the treatment meted out to activists of Azerbaijani opposition parties in the wake of October’s presidential election.
The election, which replaced the infirm authoritarian Heydar Aliyev with his son, Ilham, was criticised for irregularities.
President Aliyev junior launched a brutal crackdown on the political opposition immediately after his election, arresting hundreds and torturing many, according to human rights activists. Yet this month, with pictures from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq undermining Washington’s ability to criticise similar practices elsewhere, the Pentagon forged ahead with plans to increase its presence in the Caspian state.
US officials cite the important strategic and logistical role that the key state in the Caucasus, on the border with Iran, can play in the “war on terror”. They are also open about the need to protect the £2bn oil pipeline set to carry a million barrels of Caspian oil daily to Turkey and the American market by late next year.
Washington is increasing to 50 the number of military advisers who are training Azerbaijani troops, while doubling its annual military aid package next year to nearly £13m. One European diplomat said the US was developing a “permanent military presence by stealth”.
An exchange programme for Azerbaijani troops with the Oklahoma national guard is scheduled for 2005, and the US has built a radar station on the Caspian coast to aid border control.
American planes can be at Azerbaijani bases under a refuelling agreement, and there are persistent reports in the country’s media that the US has helped to fund improvements to local airfields, which the embassy denies.
Navy Seals
The cooperation took on a new openness on June 10, when a squad of elite US navy Seals publicly trained with Azerbaijani special forces in the Caspian, racing powerful speed boats along a stretch of sea that runs between the country’s restless neighbours, Russia and Iran.
On the same day, the second most important US general in Europe, Charles Wald, held his second meeting in three months with top Azerbaijani officials.
The Pentagon insists this presence is not “permanent” and will not amount to an American base on Azerbaijani soil. Yet Gen Wald said in March that he hoped Azerbaijan could improve some air bases so US craft could “temporarily” use them.
Nato is also increasing its interest in cooperation with Baku, with President Aliyev hovering among senior US officials at the summit in Istanbul this week.
Human rights activists and opposition supporters have accused Washington of double standards on Azerbaijan.
Until September 11 2001, the regime’s human rights record meant it was under US sanctions and received no military aid. In February this year, the US state department reported that the “police tortured and beat persons in custody” and concluded that the Aliyev government had a “poor” human rights record, protesting at the abuses after October’s presidential election, when police in black masks had brutally attacked an unarmed opposition protest, hitting some protesters as they lay unconscious. One man died and Russian television showed a small boy being carried away limp.
Opposition officials around the country were rounded up and many were tortured. Natiq Jabiyev, Musavat’s elections secretary said the organised crime unit stripped him naked and plunged nails beneath three fingers of his left hand. The US state department said reports of his torture were “credible”. Yet sanctions – lifted for reasons of national security – have not been reintroduced, and military aid has been increased.
Local politicians and activists said they were exasperated by the White House’s support for the Aliyev regime, and the US actions at Abu Ghraib.
Isa Gambar, Musavat’s leader, said: “The impact of Abu Ghraib has been very negative. Five out of seven of my party leaders who are in jail have been tortured. The Azerbaijani government, trying to justify itself, now says that torture happens everywhere. The US’s main objective here is stability, and their other goals [of fighting terrorism, extracting oil, and developing democracy] tend to be a victim of this.”
Shahla Ismailova, from the Women’s Association for Rational Development, said: “Oil is the preferred goal of the US in Azerbaijan, not civil society – even the rural population understands this.”
But the US ambassador, Reno Harnish, said: “Torture is reprehensible. We have been very public in our criticism of abuses, [but] 70, maybe 80 or even 90% of our approaches on this issue are private.”
Yet US support for the regime has made Mehdi’s disillusionment complete. “If this is democracy, then bring back socialism.
“The US come here and bring us pain, and for what? Oil.”