President Ilham Aliyev on December 15, 2025, submitted an Amnesty Act to Azerbaijan's Parliament that state media Azertac calls the largest in the country's history. Framed as marking the "Year of Constitution and Sovereignty," the proposal affects more than 20,000 people: over 5,000 prisoners would be released outright, sentences reduced for another 3,000-plus in detention, and thousands more freed from non-custodial penalties or criminal liability. The scale is undeniable. Whether the substance matches the humanitarian branding is the question that matters for Azerbaijan's credibility with European institutions, rights organizations, and its own civil society.
The amnesty arrives as Baku navigates a post-2023 Nagorno-Karabakh landscape, the aftermath of hosting COP29, and sustained pressure from the European Parliament and NGOs over what they describe as systemic repression. Authorities cast the measure as an expression of "humanism, social justice, and humanitarian values," drawing continuity with the late National Leader Heydar Aliyev's traditions. The gap between that narrative and Azerbaijan's documented rights environment will determine whether this act reshapes perceptions or simply reinforces existing patterns of selective clemency.
Scale without precedent, but familiar exclusions loom
By the numbers alone, the proposed amnesty dwarfs prior acts. A 2016 decree resulted in the release of 148 prisoners. In 2021, a mass amnesty bill was adopted to celebrate Victory Day, with at least 16,000 prisoners affected; however, only 1,023 people were released from correctional institutions, 368 from closed-type correctional institutions, and 359 convicts had their sentences replaced with probation. A May 2023 pardon marking Heydar Aliyev's centenary covered 801 prisoners, of whom 463 were released from imprisonment. A May 2025 decree granted clemency to a number of inmates, with 175 individuals having the remainder of their sentences waived. The current proposal more than doubles the largest previous total and represents the kind of headline-making gesture that invites international attention.
Yet past amnesties have followed a consistent logic: broad coverage for non-violent, less serious offenses—property crimes, administrative violations, cases involving juveniles or the elderly—while carving out crimes deemed to "pose major public threat." That language, embedded in earlier frameworks, functioned as a valve: it allowed authorities to manage prison overcrowding and project leniency while excluding politically sensitive cases. If the December 15 draft mirrors those exclusions, many journalists, activists, and opposition figures jailed on financial fraud, hooliganism, or tax evasion charges—categories rights groups describe as administrative pretexts—may not qualify.
The official breakdown offers few clues about eligibility criteria. More than 7,000 people will be released from sentences involving restriction of liberty; nearly 4,000 from other non-custodial or conditionally applied sentences; over 1,000 from criminal liability altogether. The categories sound comprehensive. The devil, as always, will be in the amnesty's final text and the court guidance that follows.
Members are reading: How European energy dependence shapes the political-prisoner calculus, and why past patterns suggest selective exclusions ahead.
The test ahead: text, transparency, and who stays behind
The proposed amnesty now moves to Parliament, where approval is a near-certainty. What follows will reveal intent. Independent monitors—civil society lawyers, international organizations with access—need transparency on eligibility criteria, court implementation guidance, and prison service procedures. If the final text excludes broad offense categories without clear, narrow definitions, or if authorities reclassify detainees' charges to keep them ineligible, the humanitarian branding will ring hollow.
Three variables matter most. First, whether journalists and activists named in the European Parliament resolution—and tracked by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and local groups—appear on release lists or remain detained. Second, whether implementation is swift and verifiable, or whether procedural delays and administrative obstacles dilute the numbers. Third, whether this act stands alone or precedes a separate, smaller presidential pardon addressing political cases—a pattern that would preserve the selectivity of past years while claiming credit for scale.
Azerbaijan's government has framed this amnesty as a sovereign, humanitarian decision rooted in national legal tradition. That narrative will be tested against documented evidence of who walks free, who remains behind bars, and whether the categories of exclusion continue to align with the categories of dissent. For European policymakers balancing energy pragmatism with rights advocacy, and for civil society inside Azerbaijan, the answers will arrive not in the headlines but in the fine print—and in the names of those who do, or do not, come home.
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