Opposition in Azerbaijan accuses Bush of double standards on torture Mehdi, still hobbling after nine months, likened the torture to having his "brain pulled out by a magnet".
Strapped to an electric chair inside the bowels of the Azerbaijani police's organised crime unit, metal panels were put under his feet, he said. A plastic bib was tied to his front, and headphones with earpieces like the metal tip of a doctor's otoscope were put inside his ears. His masked interrogators gave him one last chance to denounce the Musavat opposition party he supported, and then switched on the current, he said. "My nose was gushing blood down the bib. My eyes felt like they had leapt out of my head. My tongue was forced out of my mouth by the current. I thought my teeth would split open. And I felt like my bladder, bowels and stomach would empty." After the second burst of electricity, he lost consciousness. He recalls waking up on a couch in the same room, with a doctor giving him cardiopulmonary resuscitation. "I felt like I was floating, like I was dead," he said. Mehdi's chief interrogator began to beat him again. "Do you want to die here?" he asked. Only the doctor held him back. Nearly two weeks later, Mehdi, who asked for his real name not to be used, was released. His torture, documented by Human Rights Watch, is one example of the treatment meted out to activists of Azerbaijani opposition parties in the wake of October's presidential election. The election, which replaced the infirm authoritarian Heydar Aliyev with his son, Ilham, was criticised for irregularities. An exchange programme for Azerbaijani troops with the Oklahoma national guard is scheduled for 2005, and the US has built a radar station on the Caspian coast to aid border control. Until September 11 2001, the regime's human rights record meant it was under US sanctions and received no military aid. In February this year, the US state department reported that the "police tortured and beat persons in custody" and concluded that the Aliyev government had a "poor" human rights record, protesting at the abuses after October's presidential election, when police in black masks had brutally attacked an unarmed opposition protest, hitting some protesters as they lay unconscious. One man died and Russian television showed a small boy being carried away limp. Opposition officials around the country were rounded up and many were tortured. Natiq Jabiyev, Musavat's elections secretary said the organised crime unit stripped him naked and plunged nails beneath three fingers of his left hand. The US state department said reports of his torture were "credible". Yet sanctions - lifted for reasons of national security - have not been reintroduced, and military aid has been increased. Shahla Ismailova, from the Women's Association for Rational Development, said: "Oil is the preferred goal of the US in Azerbaijan, not civil society - even the rural population understands this." US support for the regime has made Mehdi's disillusionment complete. "If this is democracy, then bring back socialism. "The US come here and bring us pain, and for what? Oil." http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,1252330,00.html ~ Gary Denton - No sex or cameras in our torture either, we're Azerbaijani -- #1 on google for liberal news _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
