Kharkiv police detain Azerbaijani opposition activist; Ukraine rights groups demand no extradition to Baku
The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, the Center for Civil Liberties and the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (UHHRU) have called on Ukrainian law enforcement authorities to conduct an extradition review and refuse to extradite Azerbaijani opposition activist Bahruz Hasanli to Azerbaijan.
The appeal was made in a joint statement signed by Yevhen Zakharov, director of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Oleksandra Matviichuk, Nobel laureate and head of the Center for Civil Liberties; and Oleksandr Pavlichenko, UHHRU Executive Director.
Bahruz HasanliHuman rights advocates reported that officers from Police Department No. 3 of the Shevchenkivskyi District in Kharkiv detained Bahruz Hasanli, an Azerbaijani citizen and Kharkiv resident, on 27 July, 2026.
According to available information, he was detained at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
Hasanli was previously a political activist and a member of Azerbaijan’s opposition Popular Front Party. He has lived permanently in Ukraine since 2016. He is married and has a minor child. His wife and child are currently also in Kharkiv.
The Azerbaijani authorities accuse Hasanli of allegedly receiving $850,000 from unidentified individuals and transferring the money to Popular Front leader Ali Karimli “for the purpose of organising a coup.”
According to the human rights advocates, the Prosecutor General’s Office is Ukraine’s central authority responsible for extradition matters concerning suspects and defendants in criminal proceedings during pretrial investigations. The office is therefore obliged to conduct an extradition review in Hasanli’s case.
“Hasanli’s extradition would expose him to extremely high risks of ill-treatment, torture and an unfair trial. These risks are confirmed by facts related to previous extraditions,” Yevhen Zakharov, Oleksandra Matviichuk and Oleksandr Pavlichenko stated.
As an example, they cited the December 2019 extradition from Ukraine to Azerbaijan of Elvin Isayev, an opposition blogger and member of the Talysh ethnic minority. He was subjected to further torture and abuse in this country. In October 2020, he was sentenced to eight years in prison and is currently being held in a penal colony, where he is subjected to ill-treatment.
The human rights advocates are concerned that the man detained in Kharkiv could face the same fate as another Talysh, Fakhraddin Abbaszadeh, whom Russia extradited to Azerbaijan in 2018. He was tortured and sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020. Abbaszadeh was repeatedly tortured and beaten to death later that year.
Systematic human rights violations by the Azerbaijani authorities have drawn the attention of international human rights organisations.
In February 2026, a representative of Human Rights Watch issued a statement noting the Azerbaijani regime’s abuse of extradition practices and called for the following:
Baku City Court Complex, Baku, Azerbaijan, January 2025“Azerbaijani authorities should immediately drop all politically motivated charges against exiled journalists, bloggers, and activists, revoke in-absentia convictions, and cease the misuse of extradition and security mechanisms to target critics abroad. Foreign governments should refuse to act on politically motivated requests lacking credible evidence of ordinary criminal conduct and take steps to protect residents and refugees from intimidation, harassment, and irregular transfers.”
The human rights advocates also recalled that under the principle of non-refoulement, enshrined in the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a state may not return a person to a country where their life is at risk if there are substantial grounds for believing that they may face other violations of fundamental human rights, such as torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Yevhen Zakharov, Oleksandra Matviichuk and Oleksandr Pavlichenko called on the Prosecutor General’s Office to:
- ensure maximum objectivity and transparency in the extradition review in Hasanli’s case;
- refuse to extradite Hasanli to the Azerbaijani authorities and release him;
- investigate whether there were any unofficial contacts between Ukrainian officials involved in the decision to detain Hasanli and representatives of the Azerbaijani regime or intermediaries acting on its behalf.
Earlier, ZMINA reported that on 27 June 2026, the Baku Court of Grave Crimes sentenced nine journalists and media workers linked to the independent news outlet Toplum TV.
Several journalists, a media trainer, project managers and the founder of the television channel were accused of allegedly acting as an “organised criminal group” to receive and use funds from Western donors in violation of Azerbaijani law.
Alasgar Mammadli, the outlet’s founder and a media lawyer, was sentenced to 14 years in prison; video editor Mushfig Jabbar to 13 years; and reporter Farid Ismayilov and social media manager Elmir Abbasov to 12 years each.
Illustration: Toplum TV.Ali Zeynal, a media trainer at the Institute for Democratic Initiatives (IDI), was sentenced to 14 years in prison, while IDI project managers Ramil Babayev and Ilkin Amrahov were sentenced to 13 years each. IDI head and Third Republic Platform spokesperson Akif Gurbanov and platform co-founder Ruslan Izzetli were each sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The European and International Federations of Journalists condemned the court’s decision and called for the immediate release of the “unjustly convicted media workers.”
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