Presidential decree on pardon expected

Guliyev said that the State Commission was scheduled to meet shortly and the collection of documents for their further consideration the gathering.

Some observers relate the expected pardoning with the forthcoming session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which will take a report on situation with the political prisoners in Azerbaijan.

The report developed by {PACE rapporteur on a problem of political prisoners in Azerbaijan, Malcolm Bruce, says that at present 3 inmates included in the CE’s first list of 716 political prisoners, dated 2001, are still in prison. Almost all prisoners included in the list were released at the presidential decree.