Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry denounced on Wednesday criticism by Western ambassadors of the country’s human rights record, saying the diplomats’ comments amounted to interference in its judicial system.

A ministry statement posted on the Telegram messaging app said ambassadors from the United States, European Union and Switzerland made the comments at an event in Baku, referring to the detention of journalists and “political activists.”

The statement followed news that a veteran human rights advocate, Rufat Safarov, had been placed in pre-trial detention for four months following his arrest on Monday. It was the latest of a series of cases in Azerbaijan that have prompted Western concern about free speech and human rights.

“These statements are an open attempt to undermine the independent judicial system in Azerbaijan,” the foreign ministry statement said.

“Interference in the course of an investigation is unacceptable and interference in the judicial process contradicts the principle of the rule of law, the fundamental principle of a law-based state.”

It was not immediately possible to determine what the ambassadors had said at the event.

Earlier on Wednesday, a lawyer for Safarov told Reuters that Safarov had pleaded not guilty in a Baku court to charges of fraud and hooliganism and intended to appeal.

Safarov was detained a little more than a week after the close in Baku of the major U.N. climate change conference COP29.

In the run-up to the conference, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev denounced as “disgusting” a letter from U.S. lawmakers criticizing his country’s human rights record and calling for the release of political prisoners.

Safarov, a former prosecutor, served three years in prison on bribery charges before being pardoned by Aliyev and released in 2019. Media reports said he had been due to leave within days for the United States to be presented with a human rights award.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told a news briefing in Washington on Tuesday that Washington was “deeply concerned” by his detention.

“And we continue to urge Azerbaijan to release all of those unjustly detained and to cease its crackdown on civil society, including human rights defenders and journalists,” Patel said.
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