Eldar Mahmudov
BY EMIL SANAMYAN
From The Armenian Weekly
The last two months have seen an unprecedented crackdown on one of the pillars of the Aliyev regime in Azerbaijan, the Ministry of National Security (MNS). Since the Oct. 17 dismissal of Minister Eldar Mahmudov, some 250 of his subordinates, including most of the senior staff, have been dismissed. Several dozen of them have been arrested and one of them, the former deputy director of the national counter-terrorism center, was reported to have committed suicide last week by hanging himself in jail.
The direct successor of the Azerbaijani branch of the Soviet State Security Committee—better known through its Russian initials, the KGB—the MNS has always had a larger-than-life significance in Azerbaijan, not least because it was the alma mater of “national leaderâ€
