Baptist former prisoner of conscience Zaur Balaev, who was freed on 19 March after being held for nearly a year for leading his congregation, was summoned and threatened with a new prison term in early May, he told Forum 18 News Service on 12 June from his home village of Aliabad in the north-western region of Zakatala in Azerbaijan.
"Haven't you learnt from your imprisonment?" Balaev quoted police officers as telling him. "Wasn't one prison term enough for you?" And, in what Balaev says was a clear threat, one officer added: "You may not be afraid, but you've forgotten you've got a wife, daughter and a son."
Balaev said the threats came from Kamandar Hasanov, the deputy regional police chief, and two of his colleagues in Hasanov's office in Zakatala.
"They didn't hit me but they were very crude."
Balaev said the police banned his church from meeting, a ban the congregation has defied. Police have continued to visit his church during worship services. "They realise they can't drive us out," he told Forum 18, referring to the fact that all the church members are local people. "But they observe us closely."
Hasanov denied to Forum 18 that he had threatened Balaev. "There were no threats," he told Forum 18 from Zakatala on 12 June. "Who said there were any threats and raids?"
He declined to say why the Baptist congregations in Aliabad cannot meet for worship without harassment.
"Call me back later," Hasanov said and put down the phone. He was not in the office later in the day.
Strongly backing Balaev and his congregation is Ilya Zenchenko, head of Azerbaijan's Baptist Union. "They used very bad threats against him," he told Forum 18 in the capital Baku in late May. "This must be reported. They definitely want to threaten him, telling him 'this is an Islamic country and Christians shouldn't be here'."
Balaev was arrested in May 2007 on charges of attacking five police officers and damaging a police car that he and his church insist were trumped up. He was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, but was freed under amnesty in March, perhaps as a result of international attention to his case.
