Gaziev, Rahim Hasan oglu

Early career

Ragim Gaziev was born in 1943 in Sheki . He graduated from the Baku Civil Engineering Institute and defended his thesis in mathematics and physics. From 1968 to 1990, he taught at the same university ^[2] . In 1988, Gaziev became one of the founders and fifteen of the first members of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan . He became known for his nationalist views ^[2] and the fierce support of Abulfaz Elchibey . He was arrested in the summer of 1990 as the organizer of anti-Soviet unrest leading to the deployment of troops in Baku , and sent to Lefortovo prison in Moscow ^[3] . A few days later he was released as a result of his election to the Supreme Soviet of the Azerbaijan SSR , although the criminal case against Gaziev has not yet been closed ^[4] .

Minister of Defense

At the time Gaziev came to the post of Minister of Defense, the country was at war with the Armenian armed forces in Nagorno-Karabakh . On March 17, the acting president of the republic, Yakub Mammadov, appointed Gaziev, who did not have professional military training, as the Minister of Defense of Azerbaijan ^[5] . Two months later, the Azerbaijani army was forced to leave Lachin and Shusha . In response, Gaziev ordered the troops to go north. During the summer offensive , Mardakert returned to control of Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijani troops stood in the village of Vanklu , 12 km from Stepanakert ^{[4] [6]} . Known in the 1980s. his anti-Russian sentiment, Gaziev began to lean toward partnership with Russia ^[7] . In late 1992 - early 1993, Azerbaijani troops were ousted from the Mardakert region, after which the Kelbajar region was in a semi-blockade position. The Popular Front, which has been in power since June 1992, issued a statement in which it accused Rahim Gaziev and Colonel Suret Huseynov of treason and deliberate surrender of Shusha in order to restore Mutalibov as president and in betraying the geopolitical interests of Russia. In February 1993, Rahim Gaziev resigned as Minister of Defense ^[4] .

When Heydar Aliyev came to power in June 1993, Rahim Gaziyev was elected to the Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan and was offered the position of Deputy Prime Minister for the defense industry. Knowing that the country does not yet have a defense industry (it was created only in 2005 ), Gaziev during the parliamentary session called Aliyev a liar ^[4] . In an interview that he gave in 1996 , Rahim Gaziyev claimed that he had an agreement with Heydar Aliyev on which he would be appointed deputy prime minister during Aliyev’s rise to power, but was betrayed due to the regionalist views of Aliyev top positions to natives of Nakhichevan . ^[eight]

Prison

Ragim Gaziev was detained in late 1993 on charges of high treason and surrendering Shushi, but in September 1994 he managed to escape from the remand prison of the republic’s security ministry ^[9] to Moscow. There, he expressed his support for Ayaz Mutalibov ^[10] . In Azerbaijan, Ragim Gaziev was sentenced in absentia to death by shooting ^{[9] [11]} . The verdict in the case of Ragim Gaziev reads:

On April 16, 1996, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office decided to extradite the ex-defense minister in Baku ^[13] , where the death sentence in 1998 was commuted to life imprisonment. At the insistence of PACE , Rahim Gaziev was pardoned and released in March 2005 ^[14] . After his release, Gaziev published several articles in an attempt to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the public, but they did not arouse public interest ^[4] .

Gaziev tried to appeal his arrest and sentence before the European Court of Human Rights (application no. 2758/05). Recognized in February 2007 as partially admissible ^[15] , the complaint was subsequently rejected in July 2009 as inadmissible due to non-exhaustion of remedies at the national level ^[16] .