Rahim Gaziyev

Rahim Hasan oghlu Gaziyev (; born 1943) was Azerbaijani Defense Minister in 1992–1993, in the turmoil of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, and later a political prisoner.

Prior to the war Gaziyev graduated from the Azerbaijan Architecture and Construction University and has a Candidate of Sciences degree in Physics and Mathematics. From 1968 to 1990, he worked as an associate professor of mathematics at the same institution. In 1988, he became one of the founders and first fifteen members of the sovereigntist Popular Front of Azerbaijan. He was known for his radical nationalist viewpoints With the escalation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani military conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and Shusha becoming one of the few remaining Azerbaijani strongholds in the region, Gaziyev took command of the city's defense in January 1992.

Office After the resignation of President Ayaz Mutallibov on 6 March 1992, no official body regulated Gaziyev's actions, which provoked him to break ceasefire on a number of occasions including artillery bombardment of Nagorno-Karabakh's capital city Stepanakert. On 17 March 1992, Acting President of Azerbaijan Yagub Mammadov appointed Gaziyev (who had no professional military training) Defence Minister. Contrary to his radical anti-Russian sentiment in the late 1980s, Gaziyev was now convinced in the necessity of partnership with Russia. In November, the Azerbaijanis were dislodged from most of Mardakert. After Armenians started advancing into Kalbajar, the Popular Front, which had been in power since June 1992, issued a statement in which it blamed Rahim Gaziyev and Elchibey's official representative in Nagorno-Karabakh Surat Huseynov for treason and intentional surrender of Shusha in an attempt to restore Mutallibov as president and indulge Russia's geopolitical interests. Gaziyev was forced to resign in February 1993.

Conviction and later pardon Now confronting Aliyev's powerful figure, Gaziyev was officially convicted of treason in surrendering Shusha to Armenians. He was detained in jail in August 1993 and was to be tried in court in November but managed to escape to Moscow, followed by Surat Huseynov. There he declared his full support of ex-President Ayaz Mutallibov who had been living in exile in Russia since the summer of 1992 and, ironically, whom Gaziyev helped to have removed from power just two years earlier. On 16 April 1996, Prosecutor General's Office of Russia decided that Gaziyev (already sentenced to death in absentia in his home country) be deported to Baku where his sentence was replaced by life imprisonment in 1998.

At the insistence of PACE, Rahim Gaziyev was pardoned and released in March 2005. After his release, Gaziyev published several articles in an attempt to rehabilitate himself in the public eye but was taken no interest in. Gaziyev was detained as a suspect in a criminal case under Articles 281 and 282 of the criminal code. Gaziyev's daughter Sevinj Jamilova responded to these allegations by saying that "these criminal codes have nothing to do with my father". He was later released and placed under house arrest.