Baku: A court in Azerbaijan on Thursday jailed a prominent human rights campaigner for six and a half years, a move denounced by his lawyer and rights groups as politically motivated.
A serious crimes court in the capital Baku found Rasul Jafarov guilty of tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurship and abuse of power, his lawyer Fariz Namazly told AFP.
"We will appeal the illegal and politically motivated verdict," the lawyer said.
The 30-year-old activist helped organise a number of rights campaigns including one called "Sing For Democracy", which used Azerbaijan`s hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012 to draw international attention to the country`s poor human rights record.
Shortly after Jafarov`s arrest last August, Amnesty International recognised him as a prisoner of conscience.
Human Rights Watch said Jafarov`s conviction "reflects the government`s relentless crackdown against independent voices" and called for his "immediate release."
Jafarov "is clearly a prisoner of conscience and, unfortunately, not alone as such in Azerbaijan today," Isabel Santos, the head of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly`s Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions, said in a statement.
Oil-rich ex-Soviet Azerbaijan often responds to dissent with tough measures and rights groups accuse the government of using spurious charges to jail its critics.
They accuse the authorities of stepping up a campaign to stifle opposition since President Ilham Aliyev`s election to a third term in 2013.
Aliyev, 53, came to power in 2003 following an election seen as flawed by international observers.
He took over after the death of his father Heydar Aliyev, a former KGB officer and communist-era leader who had ruled newly independent Azerbaijan with an iron fist since 1993.
