B a k u – After 10 months of imprisonment in Azerbaijan, Baptist pastor Zaur Balayev (45) was unexpectedly released on 19 March. Elnur Jabiyev (Baku), General-Secretary of the Azerbaijani Baptist Union, reported on this in an email. Balayev was able to leave jail around 12 noon after Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan, had granted amnesty to 59 prisoners on the occasion of the country's spring national holiday. Jabiyev expressed thanks for all the prayers and letters in which the world's Baptists had appealed for Belayev's release. Recently, former US-President Jimmy Carter (Plains/Georgia) had called for the freeing of the Baptist pastor and rejected the accusations levelled against him as false. Carter, who himself is a Baptist, had appealed for a review of that country's official policy on religious freedom if it indeed desired positive relations with the European Union.

Pastor Balayev had been arrested during a police raid on a worship service in the town of Aliabad near the border with Georgia. According to official government reports, he had resisted the search. He was later sentenced to two years imprisonment for defying government authority. Yet 50 witnesses at the scene, including 25 members of the congregation, disputed the government's version of the incident.

Azerbaijan has 22 Baptist congregations with a membership of approximately 3.000. Ninety-six percent of the country's population of eight million are Muslims. Most of the Christians are Russian-Orthodox.