Three months after Baptist pastor Zaur Balaev was freed from prison on what his family and congregation insist were trumped-up charges, another Baptist pastor in the same remote village of Aliabad in the north-western Zakatala Region in Azerbhaijan has been arrested.

Family members told Forum 18 from Aliabad that Hamid Shabanov was arrested last Friday after police claimed to have found a gun during a house search. Family members insist that police planted the weapon.

"He's a criminal," the head of Zakatala regional police Faik Shabanov (no relation) told Forum 18 on Saturday, even though under Azerbaijani law individuals are innocent until found guilty in court. Pastor Shabanov remains in detention at the Zakatala police station, the police chief confirmed.

"This is all being done according to a scenario," Pastor Shabanov's brother Badri told Forum 18 from Aliabad on Saturday. "First they imprisoned Zaur Balaev on fabricated charges, now they're going for Hamid. Their aim is also to bring a criminal case and put him in prison." Badri Shabanov insists the true aim is to close down all Baptist activity in Aliabad.

"Their target is the church."

Condemning the arrest - the latest move in years of official harassment of Baptists in the village - is Ilya Zenchenko, head of Azerbaijan's Baptist Union.

"We're in shock," he told Forum 18 from the capital Baku on Saturday. "This was a provocation by the police, a deliberately targeted action."

Like the overwhelming majority of Aliabad's inhabitants, Pastors Shabanov and Balaev and other church members are from the Georgian-speaking Ingilo minority, which was converted to Islam several centuries ago.

The several Baptist congregations in Aliabad have faced repeated raids, threats and confiscation of religious literature. The congregation Balaev leads has existed for more than fifteen years and has repeatedly been barred from gaining state registration. Forum 18 believes it to be Azerbaijan's religious community that holds the record for the longest denial of registration. Children given Christian first names by their parents in Aliabad have been denied birth certificates by officials angry at their choice of name.

Pastor Shabanov's home was among those searched when Pastor Balaev was arrested in May 2007. Christian literature confiscated during the raid has still not been returned.

Pastor Balaev was freed from prison in March 2008 after a worldwide campaign for his release, including support from former US President Jimmy Carter. Since his release police have threatened Balaev with a further prison term if he continues his religious activity with his congregation.

"Without this international campaign Zaur Balaev would never have been freed," Zenchenko of the Baptist Union told Forum 18. "Taking his case through the local courts brought us nothing."

Pastor Shabanov's family told Forum 18 that some ten police officers from both Aliabad and Zakatala had come to the family home in the village at about 5pm last Friday. "We believe they already had the intention to seize him," the family reported. "They threatened him because we meet for worship and pray together - they said we shouldn't do it."

The family accuse the police of planting "evidence" to use against Pastor Shabanov. "They came in claiming to be looking for drugs and guns," they reported. "They searched the house and claim to have found a gun, but they planted it themselves. He has got no weapons." The family say the search and the arrest were all over in about twenty minutes.

But police chief Faik Shabanov insists the pastor is guilty of a crime, harbouring an illegal weapon. When told that the family vehemently reject the accusation, the police chief told Forum 18: "They can say what they like."

When asked why, if the police was solely concerned with an alleged illegal weapon, officers had threatened the pastor over church meetings in his home, police chief Shabanov responded: "Who are you to talk to the chief of police like that?" He then put the phone down.

Reached on Saturday, Jeyhun Mamedov of the State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations immediately put the phone down each time Forum 18 tried to ask him about Pastor Shabanov's arrest.


[By Forum 18 News Service www.forum18.org, Printed with permission]