Haji Mammadov was a lieutenant colonel and a senior operations officer in the criminal investigation department of Azerbaijan's Interior Ministry. On January 19, 2007, the Court for Serious Crimes in Baku sentenced him to life imprisonment as the leader of a group found responsible for murders and kidnappings over about ten years, from 1995 to 2005. Nine other members of the group were sentenced to life with him, several of them serving or former police officers, and the verdict reached into the senior ranks of the ministry's investigation service.
His name is also tied to a killing for which he was never charged. In July 2006, in the middle of his trial, he told the court that he had taken part in the 2005 killing of the Baku editor Elmar Huseynov. No charge followed. He died by suicide in custody in 2017.
His date and place of birth, his family background and his early career are not on record.
Mammadov served in the criminal investigation department of the Interior Ministry, a body also rendered in English as the Head Investigation Department or the Criminal Search Main Directorate. He held the rank of lieutenant colonel and was the department's chief operations officer. A former chief of the same department, Zakir Nasirov, was tried alongside him.
Prosecutors said that from 1995 to 2005 Mammadov led a group of more than two dozen people. The court found the group responsible for 11 killings and about 30 kidnappings, with ransoms totaling several million euros. The Ministry of National Security put the total for the decade at 13 killings and 8 kidnappings. The reason for the difference between the two sets of figures is not on record.
Mammadov was arrested in Baku on the night of March 9 to 10, 2005, in an operation of the Ministry of National Security. Senior law enforcement officials were among those detained with him. The number of people facing trial grew from 12 in the first days to 27 by the time the case reached court.
The case was heard by the Court for Serious Crimes in Baku, with Judge Ali Seyfaliyev presiding. Preliminary hearings opened in early July 2006, and Mammadov was tried with 26 others on charges of murder and kidnapping, with other charges. The full list of Criminal Code articles is not on record.
Mammadov's own statements were central to the trial. On July 25, 2006, he told the court that he had committed six murders, among them the killing of Azer Ismaylov, a fellow Interior Ministry official. In October 2006 he told the court that he had killed Mehman Semedov, and Semedov's mother gave evidence at the same sitting. In November 2007, after the verdict, he said that he had killed a man named Rovshan Aliyev on another man's orders, and he named Zakir Nasirov as the one who gave them. At the appeal Nasirov said that the judgment contradicted itself and that he had been accused only on the strength of Mammadov's evidence.
On January 19, 2007, after a trial of about a year and a half, the court passed sentence on 27 people. Ten were sentenced to life imprisonment: Haji Mammadov, Farhad Mammadbayov, Eldar Rahimov, Malik Mammadov, Zakir Nasirov, Kamil Sadraddinov, Huseyn Abdulvahabov, Musa Dabuyev, Aslanbay Chintamirov and Yagir Mammadov. Mammadov's property was ordered seized.
The remaining defendants received fixed terms:
15 years: Nizami Abdullayev, Sidak Abdulvahabov and Rovshan Agayev
13 years: Naila Guliyeva
12 years: Adalat Asadullayev and Novruz Nuriyev
10 years: Aligulu Guliyev and Nishad Ismayilov
9 years: Faik Guliyev and Elchin Aliyev
8 years: Mehman Hasanov, Fariz Gamidov and Elshan Mirzayev
two years, suspended: Agil Huseynov and Azar Aliyev
Twenty-three of the convicted, Mammadov among them, appealed. At the Baku Appeal Court on August 20, 2007, with Judge Rasul Safarov presiding, Mammadov asked for acquittal, arguing that the charges against him had not been proved, and he insisted on the innocence of three co-defendants. The hearing was postponed without a date because several lawyers were absent.
The appeal was decided on November 28, 2007. The Baku Appeals Court upheld the sentences for most defendants. It cut Novruz Nuriyev's term from 12 years to 11, ordered that Nizami Abdullayev's term count from his arrest in Russia on December 8, 2005, lifted the confiscation of property against Kamil Sadraddinov and partly annulled his verdict, and returned part of the case to the Prosecutor General's Office to verify the evidence. Mammadov's life sentence stood.
On July 25, 2006, Mammadov told the court that he had taken part in the March 2, 2005 killing of Elmar Huseynov, the founder of the weekly Monitor and a critic of the government. He named a former government minister, already in prison on a separate charge, as the man who had ordered it, and he made the statement against his lawyer's advice. The former minister denied it.
Few believed the claim. The editor's father said it was too convenient, since both men were already in prison, and press-freedom groups said that a confession without evidence was no real progress. Before the trial Mammadov had told investigators something different: that he had been approached with an offer to kill Huseynov but had not carried it out. He was never charged in the Huseynov case, and it is not among the offenses for which he was sentenced.
After the verdict Mammadov was held in the detention facility of the Ministry of National Security. In April 2008 the chairman of the Azerbaijan Anti-Torture Committee, Elchin Behbudov, said that Mammadov was writing a book about his life.
In later years Mammadov wrote to President Ilham Aliyev asking for the investigation to be reopened, and he said that he had been unable to speak freely at his trial. He also said that Nasirov had no connection with the case. These statements are his own; no court or prosecutor has made findings on them.
Mammadov died by suicide in custody. His death was reported on December 4, 2017, and prosecutors in Baku opened an inquiry into the circumstances. Whether that inquiry produced any finding is not on record.
The Huseynov claim of July 2006 was not charged, was widely doubted and was contradicted by Mammadov's own earlier testimony.
The count of killings differs: 11 found by the court, 13 given by the Ministry of National Security, and six admitted by Mammadov in July 2006.
The number of group members sentenced to life is given as ten, as eleven and as eight.
His later statements about pressure at his trial and about Nasirov's innocence have not been tested by a court.
1995 to 2005: period in which the group is found to have carried out its murders and kidnappings.
March 2, 2005: the editor Elmar Huseynov is killed in Baku; Mammadov is never charged with it.
March 9 to 10, 2005: Mammadov and others are arrested in an operation of the Ministry of National Security.
Early July 2006: preliminary hearings open before the Court for Serious Crimes in Baku.
July 25, 2006: Mammadov claims the Huseynov killing in court and admits to six murders.
October 2006: Mammadov tells the court he killed Mehman Semedov.
January 19, 2007: Mammadov and nine others are sentenced to life imprisonment; others receive 8 to 15 years or suspended terms.
August 20, 2007: the appeal hearing opens and is postponed.
November 28, 2007: the Baku Appeals Court upholds the life sentences.
April 2008: the head of the Anti-Torture Committee says Mammadov is writing a book.
December 4, 2017: his death by suicide in custody is reported; prosecutors open an inquiry.