Azerbaijan Arrests Members of Group Planning Armed Disturbances

Azerbaijani law enforcement authorities announced today the arrest of six citizens of the republic who were allegedly planning to organize armed disturbances in the country with the aim of seizing power and establishing a religious state.

“It has been revealed that Rufulla Akhundzada and Bakhtiyar Bayramov, who live in Iran and cooperate with Iranian special services, involved Arif Jumshudov, a resident of the Tartar region, and tasked him with creating a ‘resistance group’ to organize armed disturbances, seize power, forcibly change the constitutional order of the country, and establish a religious state governed by Sharia law,” stated a joint message from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the State Security Service, and the Prosecutor General’s Office of Azerbaijan.

According to law enforcement data, Jumshudov, in turn, involved several acquaintances in the cooperation. Additionally, law enforcement agencies report that the group members organized the sale of drugs ‘deliberately sent’ from Iran and used the substantial profits from those sales to finance radicalization and other subversive activities in Azerbaijan.