Azerbaijan charges prominent rights activist with treason

Prominent Azerbaijani human rights activist Leyla Yunus was charged Wednesday with treason, her lawyer Cavad Cavadov said.

The award-winning campaigner was also charged with tax evasion, large-scale fraud and falsifying documents.

Her husband Arif, an independent political analyst, was also charged with treason and fraud, Cavadov added.

Earlier in the day Yunus was bundled into a car in the courtyard of her apartment building in Baku and taken away by three plain-clothes men, family spokesman Yusif Agayev said.

A fierce critic of Azerbaijan's poor rights record, Yunus is head of one of Azerbaijan's leading rights groups, the Institute for Peace and Democracy in Baku.

She was detained and questioned for several hours in April.

Bakudaily.az