New amendments to the law on advocacy threaten to remove any last vestiges of independence within Azerbaijan’s Bar Association.
When police began arresting the last remaining staff working with Meydan TV within Azerbaijan in December 2024, few believed they would receive a fair trial.
The six detainees — editor-in-chief Aynur Gambarova (Elgunash) and five journalists — were charged with money laundering, a charge levied against other independent journalists in the country after the authorities launched a renewed crackdown on the press a year earlier. Six others who worked with Meydan TV have also since been arrested as part of the case.
While expectations for justice were low, even putting forward a defence proved difficult.
Speaking to OC Media from exile in Germany, where Meydan TV is headquartered, Orkhan Mammad, an editor at the outlet, said they struggled to find lawyers even willing to take on their case.
This, he said, was because few lawyers free from government influence remain active in the country.
‘Another problem is that accusations against lawyers are aired on state television […] and they are also openly attacked or even targeted’, Mammad added.
For over a decade, pressure has increased on lawyers — through supposedly independent disciplinary hearings — not to put forward cases questioning the authorities.
On 10 October, the Azerbaijani Parliament began discussing new amendments to the law on advocacy and related activity — amendments that critics warn could spell the final nail in the coffin for legal advocacy in Azerbaijan.
The state capture of the Azerbaijani Bar Association
Only two days before the discussions of the amendments in parliament, the Bar Association announced they had taken new disciplinary measures against several lawyers.
The Bar Association was originally created as an independent, self-governing organisation for lawyers to regulate the profession, as well as provide professional support to its members. They cite their main objective as protecting ‘the rights and freedoms of every person, protected by law, to provide them with professional, high quality, honest legal assistance, and to enhance the prestige of the legal profession’. There are currently over 2,500 members.
‘Two lawyers were suspended from their work for a specified period, four lawyers were given warnings, and one lawyer was reprimanded for disciplinary violations’, the association’s official website wrote on 8 October.
The lawyers were not named by the Bar Association, however, RFE/RL identified them as Zabil Gahramanov and Ramil Rustamov, each of whom were suspended for six months.
Gahramanov is a well known figure in legal circles, having taken on high profile cases including that of Ilkin Suleymanov, who was accused of murdering 11-year-old Narmin Guliyeva in the northwestern Tovuz District. Gahramanov also helped Polad Ismailov appeal an 11-year sentence for murder, securing his release after serving four years.
Shortly after his suspension, Gahramanov was detained and remanded to three months of pre-trial detention on charges of hooliganism — a friend suggested to OC Media that the case could be connected to Gahramanov’s frequent public criticism of the police in Ganja.
This is not the first time lawyers have been punished for their public opinion in Azerbaijan — the Bar Association’s disciplinary commission has frequently applied these rules against independent lawyers. Indeed, these incidents have often been discussed on social media, with independent lawyers claiming that these rules serve only to silence them.
One member of the Bar Association who spoke to OC Media on condition of anonymity said the new changes in the legislation meant lawyers would be obligated to refrain from expressing critical opinions about government agencies and officials in the media and online.
The final nail in the coffin for human rights lawyers in Azerbaijan?
