BAKU -- A court in Azerbaijan has handed a lengthy prison term to another activist from the opposition Azerbaijan Popular Front Party (AXCP) amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent that has raised concerns in the West.
The Baku Court for Serious Crimes sentenced Elbayi Kerimli to six years in prison on April 7 after finding him guilty of drug possession.
The 20-year-old activist rejected the charge, calling it retaliation by the authorities for his painting the word "Stalin" last summer on the monument of the South Caucasus country's former president, Heydar Aliyev, the late father of current President Ilham Aliyev.
Also over the weekend, a court in Baku extended the pretrial detention of Tofiq Yaqublu, a member of the Coordination Center of Azerbaijan's Democratic Forces' National Council and a leading member of the opposition Musavat Party, by another two months.
Yaqublu, 63, was arrested in December on charges of fraud and document forgery, which he and his supporters have called politically motivated.
Critics of Aliyev's government say authorities in the oil-rich Caspian Sea state have been ramping up efforts to silence dissent by jailing opposition activists, journalists, and civil-society advocates on trumped-up charges.
On April 1, The Baku Court for Serious Crimes sentenced AXCP member Elxan Aliyev to five years in prison on fraud charges that Aliyev and his supporters have rejected as politically motivated.
Aliyev's lawyer, Nemat Kerimli, told RFE/RL at the time that his client had been prosecuted not for fraud and forgery, but for political reasons.
At the moment, 11 AXCP activists are being held in custody on various charges that the party calls politically motivated. On April 3, the AXCP urged international community to impose personal sanctions on Azerbaijani officials involved in ongoing crackdown on dissent.
Azerbaijani officials have insisted that there are no political prisoners in the tightly controlled state.
Last month, almost a dozen journalists from the online Toplum TV channel were detained after police searched their offices, prompting the U.S. State Department to say it was "deeply troubled" by the reports.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Reporters Without Borders have also demanded that Azerbaijani authorities immediately release the journalists and drop all charges against them.
Aliyev has ruled Azerbaijan with an iron fist since 2003, taking over from his father, who served as president for a decade.