Azerbaijan: Human rights activist Leyla Yunus freed from jail

Yunus, who was jailed for 8.5 years in August on charges of tax evasion and illegal entrepreneurship, had her imprisonment replaced with a five-year suspended sentence, Sadiqov said.

Yunus, head of the non-governmental Peace and Democracy Institute, a Baku-based human rights group, was arrested together with her husband, Arif, in August 2014 on charges of high treason and a series of economic charges including tax evasion and fraud.

The couple rejected the charges as politically motivated.

Arif was released from prison last month.

The United States, European Union and international rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had been calling for the couple’s release from jail.