Firangiz Huseynova, the mother of imprisoned blogger Mehman Huseynov, passed away on 6 August. She had been seriously ill and spent the last weeks in intensive hospital care, suffering from acute heart failure.
Authorities never allowed the political prisoner to visit his dying mother to say goodbye.
On 15 July, the health of Huseynov’s mother had deteriorated to an extent that she was clinically dead before doctors were able to bring her back to life. She spent three weeks in a medically-induced coma before doctors disconnected her from life support.
Firangiz Huseynov, 71, died without having said goodbye to her son.
The journalist had asked the government to allow him to see his mother, but his request was denied. The Penitentiary Service rejected his appeal, saying that he did not participate in “corrective work”, namely the prison’s “social life”, “cultural events”, and “maintenance work”.
A group of Azerbaijani journalists and lawyers had supported Huseynov’s request and appealed to ombudsman Elmira Suleymanova as well as the leadership of the Penitentiary Service and the Ministry of Justice on his behalf.
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Huseynov is a popular journalist and video blogger. He has authored many investigations into the lavish lifestyle of government officials, the wrongdoings of law enforcement agencies, and the country’s numerous social problems. His Facebook page, where he published most of his materials, had more than 300,000 followers.
He was abducted by unidentified people in downtown Baku on 9 January 2017 and was held in a police station. A day later, a court fined him 200 manats for resisting the police. After leaving the courtroom, Huseynov described journalists how he had been tortured by police officers. In consequence, the chief of the Nasimi district police filed a libel suit, and on 3 March 2017, Huseynov was sentenced to two years in prison.
