The amnesty that Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s authoritarian president, declared for the holiday of Novruz on March 17th was a rare piece of good news for Azerbaijan’s civil-society activists. Of the 148 people pardoned, 14 were political prisoners, according to local watchdog groups. Among the close-knit dissidents in Baku, the capital, speculation was rife over the reason for the pardons. Were they a result of international pressure? Perhaps the president wanted to clean up his record before a planned visit to Washington on March 31st? Foreign supporters hope it was their advocacy that did the trick. But local observers chalk it up to the low price of oil, Azerbaijan’s chief export. Mr Aliyev, they think, is running short of the cash he normally uses to buy off foreign critics through “caviar diplomacy”, and needed to find a substitute.
The day after the announcement, the newly released gathered with friends and fellow activists. Anar Mammadli, a prominent elections monitor imprisoned for over two years, celebrated in his parents’ top-floor apartment along with family members, reporters and former political prisoners. Rasul Jafarov, a human-rights lawyer jailed for a year and eight months, spent the day at a bakery owned by his uncle; family and friends crowded around the bread oven as the telephone rang off the hook. At other spots around Baku, well-wishers celebrated the freedom of Tofiq Yaqublu, a columnist and vice-president of the Musavat Party, and the conditional release of Rauf Mirkadirov, a journalist jailed for “espionage” after being deported from Turkey two years ago.
For the families of three dissidents who were not included in the amnesty, it was a wrenching day. The wife and daughter of Ilgar Mammadov, the leader of the opposition REAL political movement, waited in vain for him to be allowed his twice-weekly call home. In another part of the city, the mother and sister (pictured below) of Khadija Ismayilova, an investigative journalist, were preparing food to bring when they visit her in prison. Ms Ismayilova, who had investigated the wealth of President Aliyev’s family members, was abruptly accused of embezzlement and abuse of power last year, and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. Intigam Aliyev, a lawyer who defended most of Azerbaijan’s political prisoners before becoming one himself in 2014, was also left off the amnesty list. His son Necmin plans to travel abroad to keep his father’s imprisonment on the agenda.