The Baku Court of Appeal decided to suspend the proceedings against human rights defenders Leyla and Arif Yunus. However, this decision does not exempt them from criminal prosecution, Turan reports.

Human rights defenders Leyla Yunus, director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy, and her husband Arif Yunus were arrested in the summer of 2015 on charges of economic crimes and treason against the homeland.

On August 13, 2015, Leyla Yunus was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison and Arif Yunus received seven years in prison. The spouses denied the charges, claiming the political nature of the case.

After protests by international organizations on December 9, 2015. On December 9, 2015, the Baku Court of Appeals commuted the sentence of the Yunus spouses to a suspended sentence of five years each.

On April 19, 2016, the spouses left Azerbaijan for medical treatment with the consent of the court. In the same year, the Supreme Court returned the case for review by the appellate court, but due to the absence of the convicts, the review was postponed.
Today, the Baku Court of Appeal suspended the proceedings due to the impossibility to consider the case due to the absence of the Yunus spouses.
According to lawyer Elchin Sadigov, the defense insisted on considering the case with the participation of the defendants online. The defense insisted on the termination of criminal proceedings on exculpatory grounds.

However, the court rejected the petition and did not withdraw the arrest from the apartment of the couple's daughter.
As the lawyer explained, despite the termination of the proceedings, the criminal prosecution of the spouses Yunus has not been withdrawn.
The proceedings may be resumed if they arrive in Azerbaijan or submit a request for their arrest abroad and extradition to Azerbaijan.
We note that the Yunus spouses were granted political asylum in the Netherlands. The European Court of Human Rights had earlier ruled that persecution of the Yunus couple was unlawful.

They were found to be in violation of their rights under Article 18 (the limits of the use of restrictions) of the European Convention, that is, for political reasons.
The case of the Yunus spouses is in the "Anar Mammadli group," the activists, whose full acquittal by the Strasbourg court decision is insisted upon by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.