OSLO, Norway (ABP) — Four Baptists in Azerbaijan received five-day jail sentences Oct. 31 after a police raid on a harvest festival in a private home, according to an international news service that specializes in religious freedom.
Forum 18, a news service based in Oslo, Norway, quoted witnesses who said about 80 Baptists were present when police raided the home of Ilgar Mamedov in Kusar in northeastern Azerbaijan, where the congregation was meeting for a worship celebration to thank God for the fall harvest.
Police reportedly first turned off gas and electricity to the home to stop worshipers from preparing a thanksgiving meal. They then recorded names of and filmed and photographed people in the home before taking four members of the group to a police station for a late-night hearing held behind closed doors.
Mamedov and three others — Zalib Ibrahimov of Baku, Rauf Gurbanov of Sumgait and Akif Babaev from a nearby village — were each sentenced to five days in jail. Baptists told Forum 18 that authorities were threatening to give Ibrahimov a 12-year prison sentence.
An official with the Council of Churches — whose congregations refuse on principle to register with the authorities in any of the former Soviet states where they operate — called the penalties the heaviest to date on members in Azerbaijan.
While the Council of Churches argues that congregations have a right under Azerbaijan's Constitution to refuse to register as a matter of conscience, churches affiliated with a separate Baptist group have complained of trying to register but running into bureaucratic roadblocks with local officials.
Zauer Balaev, pastor of a Baptist church in the capital city of Baku, served 10 months of a two-year sentence on what supporters called false charges in May 2007. He was released from prison in March 2008 after protests from officials of the Baptist World Alliance, European Baptist Federation and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
A second Baptist pastor, Hamid Shabanov, was convicted last in 2009 on weapons charges. Members of his church said the pastor did not own a gun, but police apparently planted one in his home as a way to intimidate religious and ethnic minorities.
Jehovah's Witnesses and members of a non-recognized Muslim sect also report abuses of religious freedom in Azerbaijan.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.