Crown Prince of Norway meets with Eynulla Fatullayev (Photo)

During the visit of the Crown Prince of Norway Haakon to Baku, the country’s embassy hosted a reception at the State Philharmonic Society in the evening on June 6. During the event the Crown Prince met separately with the recent political prisoner, editor of the Real Azerbaijan paper Eynulla Fatullayev, the employee of Human Rights House Vugar Gojayev and a group of human rights advocates from Azerbaijan.

”We talked for about 15 minutes. I thanked him for the work of Steinar Gjell as ambassador to Baku, as well as support from the Norwegian government and the Foreign Minister of this country. Separately, I expressed my gratitude to the Norwegian NGOs and the Royal Family of Norway for support to the family of the murdered journalist Elmar Huseynov,” Fatullayev told Turan after the meeting.

  “The Crown Prince asked me what the prison gave me, and I replied that this was valuable experience that will be needed in my future life. The Prince also asked whether I intend to continue my work as journalist, to which I replied positively.

A large number of Azerbaijani citizens turned to me with this issue and I think this is an important argument in favor of resuming my work.
   I asked the Prince to raise the issue of release of the bloggers Bakhtiyar Hajiyev and Jabbar Savalan at the meeting with Ilham Aliyev. The Prince promised to do this,” Fatullayev said.

   In turn, the Director of the House of Human Rights (member of the Norwegian NGO network), which closed in Baku earlier this year, Vugar Gojayev told Turan that the House’s closing down was discussed at the meeting with the Prince. “I asked him to raise the issue of restoration of the Human Rights House, and the Prince promised to do this,” Gojayev said. -03B-