OSCE mission scandal: entry denied, passport confiscated, held for three hours at Baku airport: Azerbaijan dictator throws Swiss national councilor out of country

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Zurich Airport, Saturday afternoon: Nik Gugger (53), national councilor of the EPP, returns from a trip that will make international headlines. Twelve hours earlier, there was a scandal in the Azerbaijani capital Baku: the regime threw the Swiss politician out of the country.

Gugger is angry. Behind the scenes, the diplomatic threads glow. Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis (62) was informed about the incident early on Saturday morning.

“What happened there is a scandal,” says the EPP politician over coffee overlooking Zurich airport. He hasn’t slept in over 30 hours.

Gugger must report human rights violations

The incident is actually explosive. Gugger traveled to Azerbaijan as an official and accredited election observer for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). His mission on the ground: to observe the upcoming presidential elections and report human rights violations. Gugger has experience with this and has already carried out similar missions in Russia and Moldova.

But he has never experienced what happened on Saturday evening. As soon as he landed in Baku, he was stopped at the diplomatic entrance by uniformed police officers. They confiscated his passport and refused him entry. Other OSCE observers were allowed through without any problems, including the Swiss delegation.

“The fact that the Azerbaijani regime is so dismissive of an observer mission is a new level of escalation,” Gugger said. “The situation was dire.” Azerbaijan must immediately report to the OSCE.

Police detained the national councilor at Baku airport for almost three hours, bought him tea and then put him on a plane to Istanbul. Only in Turkey did he get his passport back. He landed in Zurich on Saturday at 2 p.m.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (EDA) confirmed the incident to Blick: “We are aware of it.” The Swiss Embassy in Baku tried to support National Councilor Nik Gugger. “The FDFA will intervene with the Azerbaijani authorities through the usual diplomatic channels.”

The failure of a registered OSCE observer to enter a country is a diplomatic insult and is extremely rare.

The election winner has already been determined

The elections in Azerbaijan will be held next Wednesday. But the winner has already been determined: dictator Ilham Aliyev (62) continues to rule. There are no fair elections in Azerbaijan. In the democracy index of the British magazine Economist, the country ranks 134th out of 167.

It is not yet clear why exactly Gugger was not allowed to enter the country. But it could be related to his work in the Council of Europe. Just last week, the regime in Baku announced that it would not accept election observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). Because Gugger, in addition to his involvement with the OSCE, is also an election observer for the Council of Europe, he could have ended up on a blacklist. The Azerbaijani embassy in Bern could not be reached for comment.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict could also play a role

Gugger’s political involvement in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict could also be a thorn in the side of the dictatorship in the Caucasus. Last September, the Azerbaijani army captured the unrecognized micro-republic and expelled more than 100,000 Christian Armenians. National Councilor Gugger publicly protested the violence and also sent his criticism to the Azerbaijani ambassador.

“I have been campaigning for peace for years and trying to build bridges,” says the EPP politician. The fact that the regime in Baku is now denying him access to the country is frustrating and shows that Azerbaijan is still far from a constitutional state.

Source:Blick