BAKU -- A court in Baku on December 29 started preliminary hearings in a case against Azerbaijani activist Baxtiyar Haciyev, who has been in pretrial detention for more than a year.
During the hearing, when Judge Ali Mammadov stressed that Haciyev is under arrest, the activist said he is being held "hostage."
The judge agreed to allow Haciyev's lawyers to restart visitations to their client during the trial. He also ordered investigators to provide the defense team with freshly printed materials from the case after they complained previous copies of materials were of poor quality and hard to read.
After learning that the defendant received the papers related to his final charges and the case in general just a day earlier, the judge adjourned the preliminary hearing until January 7, saying the defendants must be given at least a week to get acquainted with all the materials of the case.
Haciyev, who was born in 1982, was arrested in early December 2022 and charged with hooliganism and contempt of court. He rejects the charges.
In June, investigators added charges of "illegal entrepreneurship," "false entrepreneurship," "forgery," "use of forged documents," and "smuggling." Haciyev has rejected these charges as well.
He has held two hunger strikes since the start of his detainment, protesting the "politically motivated" case against him.
Haciyev was previously convicted on slander charges and had been detained during human rights protests in recent years.
In 2011, Haciyev was given a two-year prison sentence on charges of evading military duty but was released nine months early on the eve of then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's scheduled visit to Baku.
He has consistently denied any wrongdoing. Azerbaijani and international human rights groups have recognized Haciyev as a political prisoner.
In February, the U.S. State Department expressed concerns over Haciyev's arrest and his state of health, stressing that the charges against him are "understood as politically motivated."
Critics of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's government say authorities in the oil-rich Caspian Sea state frequently seek to silence dissent by jailing opposition activists, journalists, and civil society advocates on trumped-up charges.
Aliyev has ruled Azerbaijan with an iron fist since 2003, taking over for his father, Heydar Aliyev, who served as president for a decade.