TALLINN, Estonia– A court in Azerbaijan on Friday founded guilty a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter and 6 others on several costs, passing on jail sentences varying from 7 1/2 to 9 years behind bars, RFE/RL and neighborhood media reported.
The judgment versus RFE/RL’s Farid Mehralizada and 6 reporters from Abzas Media, an independent Azerbaijani investigatory electrical outlet, notes the most up to date acceleration in the nation’s suppression on media. All 7 reporters have actually rejected the costs as politically encouraged, and global legal rights teams have actually required their launch.
Mehralizada, a reporter with RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani solution and an economic expert, was punished to 9 years behind bars, RFE/RL reported. Nine-year sentences were additionally handed to Abzas Media’s supervisor Ulvi Hasanli, primary editor Sevinj Abbasova (Vagifqizi) and investigatory reporter Hafiz Babali. Press Reporters Nargiz Absalamova and Elnara Gasimova were punished to 8 years behind bars, and replacement supervisor Mahammad Kekelov– to 7 1/2 years, Abzas Media stated.
Reporters Without Boundaries (RSF) in a declaration Friday condemned the sentences as “horrendous” and “the result of a simply political test based upon produced costs, focused on silencing voices that subject corruption and oppression.”
” The Azerbaijani authorities might lock up reporters, however they can not lock up the fact,” the team’s content supervisor Anne Bocandé stated. “RSF asks for the prompt launch of all Abzas Media accuseds and prompts global stars to increase stress on Baku.”
RFE/RL Head Of State and Chief Executive Officer Stephen Capus in a declaration Friday stated Mehralizada was “unjustifiably restrained” and required his launch.
” Farid has actually currently shed a good deal. Unjustifiably restrained for greater than a year, he missed out on the birth of his kid, and currently awaits evasive justice. Rejecting this guy his basic legal rights is needlessly terrible. As opposed to continuing this sham, it’s time to rejoin Farid with his household,” the declaration checked out.
6 Abzas Media reporters were jailed in November 2023. The authorities declared that they had actually located 40,000 euros in money in the electrical outlet’s workplace in Azerbaijan’s resources, Baku, and charged them of conspiring international money right into Azerbaijan.
Mehralizada was jailed in Might 2024 as component of the very same situation, despite the fact that both him and Abzas Media stated that he never ever benefited the electrical outlet. Later on that year, authorities imposed added fees versus Mehralizada and Azbas Media reporters, consisting of prohibited entrepreneurship, tax obligation evasion, record bogus and others.
In his shutting declaration to the court, which RFE/RL showed The Associated Press, Mehralizada stated that “the fact is that I have actually not devoted any kind of criminal activity … Independent media is among the best methods of solution to the state, the country, and mankind. Regrettably, journalism in our nation today is practically related with terrorism.”
Weeks prior to Mehralizada’s apprehension, in March 2024, Azerbaijani authorities targeted one more information electrical outlet, Toplum television, with raids and apprehensions on comparable costs. In December 2024, Azerbaijani authorities arrested six more journalists on smuggling charges, consisting of 5 of those benefiting the independent Meydan television information electrical outlet.
Previously this year, authorities took out press qualifications from Voice of America and Bloomberg and closed down the BBC’s workplace in Azerbaijan.
In a January 2025 record, Amnesty International stated Azerbaijani authorities “have actually methodically silenced independent media with politically encouraged apprehensions” which those apprehensions, along with closing down independent information electrical outlets, “show Azerbaijan’s ongoing suppression on the right to civil liberty and media self-reliance, with produced costs weaponized to suppress cost-free media.”
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