Man Who Brutally Killed LGBTQ+ Activist Sentenced to 9.5 Years
OC Media reports. Gulaliyev said he had gone to Hafizli’s house to give him a “final warning.”“I told him to return to turn from this path [homosexuality], and he said ‘It’s my life, go and do your job,’” Gulaliyev told the court, according to OC Media. “I took a knife from the kitchen and attacked him.”The outlet notes that those convicted of murder in Azerbaijan can face 9-14 years in prison.
However, if the person exempts a certain level of brutality in the murder, they can be sentenced to 14-20 years or even sentenced to life.During the trial, Hafizli’s mother testified that he had been stabbed in his sleep as the mattress had been soaked in blood and that he then appeared to have tried to flee from his cousin’s attack.The activist’s body was found outside.
His throat had been slit and he had been castrated. Human rights activists in the country have called out the court’s decision, calling out the prison sentence.LGBTQ+ rights activist Gulnara Mehdiyeva said that after Gulaliyev’s confession, including that he stabbed his cousin in his sleep, that the court should have considered the crime as reaching that level of brutality, according to OC Media.Activists and media had been barred from attending many of the trial’s hearings, according to PinkNews.Hafizli had been an outspoken critic of Azerbaijan’s LGBTQ+ record.
He once chained himself to the gate of the Prosecutor General’s Office in Baku over the lack of hate crime protections for LGBTQ+ people.
