BAKU -- A couple in Azerbaijan claim the husband was coerced into checking into a psychiatric hospital in the western exclave of Naxcivan for refusing to pay a bribe, RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service reports.
Mahammad Gurbanov, 56, works as a vendor and says he was asked on September 12 to pay extra customs on goods he had imported from Turkey.
When he refused, his wife told RFE/RL, he was taken to an Internal Affairs Ministry office for questioning and his goods were destroyed.
Gurbanov told RFE/RL through an open hospital window that he was forced to write a "request to be treated at the mental hospital."
The case is the third in Azerbaijan in the past two years in which an individual claimed to have been taken to a psychiatric clinic by police after refusing to pay a bribe.