Azernews.Az

An Azerbaijani court has sentenced a former scholar of the National Academy of Sciences to seven years in prison over fraud.
The ruling, issued by the Grave Crimes Court to Mirseyfaddin Mammadov, a PhD candidate in economics, says that following the murder in February 2009 of Rail Rzayev, the commander of the Azerbaijan Air Force, he had written letters under different signatures to a Prosecutor-General’s Office department citing names of people allegedly involved in the crime.
The Prosecutor-General’s Office investigation department summoned the cited persons for questioning. 100 people were interrogated based on the allegations. Further, investigators scrutinized the source of the letters, and Mammadov was subsequently arrested.
The defendant pleaded not guilty during the trial, saying he had not written the letters. However, the court established that this was not the case based on the outcomes of a forensic expertise on handwriting.
Under another charge pressed against Mammadov, he had written letters to law enforcement agencies under different signatures claiming terror groups had delivered weaponry to the country and that armed burglaries were being masterminded into the apartments of several National Security Ministry officials and Baku district police chiefs.
Forensic experts testifed that all the letters had been written by the same person and confirmed, based on the expertise, that it was Mammadov.*