Today marks the 94th birthday anniversary of the national leader of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev, who served as the President of the Republic in 1993-2003.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, the First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva, family members, relatives and friends of the national leader visited the Alley of Honors. President Aliyev laid a wreath at the grave of National Leader Heydar Aliyev, and paid tribute to him. The national anthem of Azerbaijan was played.
Then, the president and his family members laid flowers at the graves of the prominent ophthalmologist, academician Zarifa Aliyeva, the outstanding statesman Aziz Aliyev, as well as the renowned doctor and scientist Tamerlan Aliyev.
The event was also attended by the Prime Minister Artur Rasizade, the Parliament Speaker Ogtay Asadov, the Head of the Presidential Administration Ramiz Mehdiyev, ministers, heads of committees and companies, MPs, AzerTac reported.
Heydar Aliyev was born on 10 May 1923 in Nakhichevan, he graduated from the Nakhchivan Pedagogical College and started to study at the architectural department of the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute. During the war [WWII] he worked at an office of the People's Commissariat of Interior Affairs and the Council of People's Commissar's of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Nakhchivan; at the age of 21 he was sent to work at the state security service. Later, he received special higher education in Leningrad and graduated from the history department of the Azerbaijan State University.
From 1964 he held the post of the deputy chairman, and three years later in from 1967 the chairman of the Committee of State Security under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General. In 1969, he became the head of the Azerbaijan SSR. In 1982 he was elected to the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
After nearly 20 years of leadership in the republic, in 1987, Heydar Aliyev, as a sign of protest against the policy pursued by Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and personally the Secretary General Michael Gorbachev in relation to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, resigned from his post.
Since July 1990, Heydar Aliyev lived in Baku, then in Nakhchivan. He was elected to the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan, he also held the post of the Chairman of the Supreme Assembly of the Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan, the Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the chairman of the Yeni Azerbaijan Party.
On 24 July 1993 Heydar Aliyev became the acting President of the Republic of Azerbaijan and on October 3, 1993, he was elected the President of the Republic.
On October 11, 1998, Heydar Aliyev was re-elected president for the second term. In 2003, he refused to participate in the next presidential elections due to health problems. He died on December 12, 2003 at the Cleveland Clinic in the US. On December 15 Aliyev was buried at the Alley of Honor in Baku.
