Azerbaijan's postal service is like a black hole when it comes to politically sensitive documents

And it is not even funny. 

For a second time already, the country's postal service says it "lost" an envelope addressed to the European Court of Human Rights. Speaking with local media, lawyer Nemat Karimli said, it is second time that Azerbaijani postal service lost Fuad Gahramnli's documents that were meant to reach the ECHR. 

Gahramanli, is deputy head of Azerbaijan's opposition Popular Front Party. He was arrested on December 8 of 2015 for his critical of the government Facebook status updates. He is being charged with challenging state authority and inciting national, racial, religious hatred and hostility. 

Previously, the postal service "lost" documents in the case of freelance reporter Shirin Abbasov who at the time had complaint letters mailed. Abbasov's lawyer, received compensation in the amount of 82AZN. 

This time the postal service has been quiet. 

Azerbaijan's postal service is notorious for being "interested" in mail of its citizens. For decades packages sent from abroad would come half open or glued all over. Sometimes, the contents would be missing or not all in place. Surely there is no concrete evidence, but plenty of personal anecdotes and experiences are enough to conclude, that big brother with tiny mustache and his friends keep an eye out on what people send and receive. 

'Join us and urge Azerbaijan to free Eynulla Fatullayev'

A campaign launched by Amnesty International calls on everyone to take action and join supporters in calling on the Azerbaijani authorities to release arrested journalist Eynulla Fatullayev who was imprisoned in 2007 on baseless charges and despite recent ruling by the European Court of Human rights remains in prison on additional drug possession charges. 

Here is what you have to do to join the action:

November 11

Yesterday, November 11th, was the day when a court decision in the capital of Baku changed lives of two young bloggers- Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizada sentencing them to imprisonment based on faked charges of hooliganism and inflicting of intentional body harm exactly a year ago on this day. 

Also yesterday, the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan agreed to finally approve the verdict to release Eynulla Fatullayev issued by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). While initially local news outlets reported on most of the charges against arrested journalist and editor-in-chief of Realniy Azerbaijan imprisoned in 2007 drop, it didn't take long for the Supreme Court come up with a reason to keep him in prison. 

The Supreme Court, retroactively increased the sentence on tax evasion- initially two months- to two years and three months and 15 days. Eynulla already served two years and three months worth of his sentence, however, in December 2009, he was given additional charge for drug possession ( in prison (dismissed by Fatullayev himself however not accepted at the court). So, with this final decision, and the total time Eynulla already served, the Court managed to keep him in prison and claim that the time he has spent already in prison will be deducted from the time he was charged with tax evasion (which is exactly two years, three months and 15 days) and keep him for drug possession.

According to Elchin Sadigov, the lawyer of the arrested journalist "The Plenum had not authority to retroactively increase the prison sentence for the defendant".   

Sitting at a 7th South Caucasus Media Conference in the capital of Georgia, organized by the OSCE,  and listening to the representative from Azerbaijan Presidential Apparatus saying that Emin and Adnan were just hooligans, arrested with other 2000 hooligans in 2009, one cannot but wonder where Azerbaijan is going... Its so ironic that whenever it works for the government and authorities it claims that it follows European or American standards but for some reason none of these standards are applied on the ground when it comes to many things, including freedom of media, access to information, journalists' safety and much more...