Azerbaijan jails 7 journalists in latest media crackdown on free speech
TALLINN, Estonia -- A court in Azerbaijan on Friday convicted a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist and six others on multiple charges, handing down prison sentences ranging from seven and a half to nine years in prison, RFE/RL and local media reported.
The verdict against RFE/RL's Farid Mehralizada and six journalists from Abzas Media, an independent Azerbaijani investigative outlet, marks the latest escalation in the country's crackdown on media. All seven journalists have dismissed the charges as politically motivated and linked to their journalism. International rights groups have called for their release.
Mehralizada, an economist who works for RFE/RL's Azerbaijani service, was sentenced to nine years in prison, the broadcaster reported. Nine-year sentences were also handed to Abzas Media's director Ulvi Hasanli, chief editor Sevinj Abbasova (Vagifqizi) and investigative journalist Hafiz Babali.
Reporters Nargiz Absalamova and Elnara Gasimova were sentenced to eight years in prison, and deputy director Mahammad Kekelov to seve and a half years, Abzas Media said.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned the sentences as 'outrageous' and 'the outcome of a purely political trial based on fabricated charges, aimed at silencing voices that expose corruption and injustice.'
'The Azerbaijani authorities may imprison journalists, but they cannot imprison the truth,' RSF editorial director Anne Bocande said Friday. 'RSF calls for the immediate release of all Abzas Media defendants and urges international actors to intensify pressure on Baku.'
RFE/RL chief executive Stephen Capus said Mehralizada had been 'unjustifiably detained' and called for his release.
'Farid has already lost a great deal. Unjustifiably detained for more than a year, he missed the birth of his child and now waits for elusive justice. Denying this man his fundamental rights is unnecessarily cruel. Instead of perpetuating this sham, it's time to reunite Farid with his family,' Capus said in a statement.
'A chilling message'
Amnesty International said the case against Abzas Media was 'an example of how Azerbaijan's judicial system is being weaponized to muzzle independent journalism'.
'By pressing fabricated economic charges against journalists who exposed high-level corruption, the Azerbaijani authorities are sending a chilling message to anyone in the country who dares to challenge them,' Marie Struthers, Amnesty's regional director, said in a statement, urging 'a strong international reaction.'
Six Abzas Media journalists were arrested in November 2023. The authorities claimed that they had found 40,000 euros in cash in the outlet's office in Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, and accused them of conspiring foreign currency into Azerbaijan.
Mehralizada was arrested in May 2024 as part of the same case, even though both him and Abzas Media said that he never worked for the outlet. Later that year, authorities levied additional charges against Mehralizada and Azbas Media journalists, including illegal entrepreneurship, tax evasion, document forgery and others.
In his closing statement to the court, which RFE/RL shared with The Associated Press, Mehralizada said that 'the truth is that I have not committed any crime...Independent media is one of the greatest means of service to the state, the nation, and humanity. Unfortunately, journalism in our country today is almost equated with terrorism.'
Media crackdown
Weeks before Mehralizada's arrest, in March 2024, Azerbaijani authorities targeted another news outlet, Toplum TV, with raids and arrests on similar charges. In December 2024, six more journalists were arrested on smuggling charges, including five working for the independent Meydan TV news outlet.
Earlier this year, press credentials were withdrawn for Voice of America and Bloomberg and the BBC's office in Azerbaijan was shut down.
RFE/RL's bureau in Azerbaijan was shut down in 2014, and its domestic website was blocked in 2017. But the Azerbaijani service has continued to operate despite the restrictions and pressure from the authorities, Alsu Kurmasheva, an RFE/RL journalist involved in the news organization's press freedom advocacy efforts, told AP.
Kurmasheva, who was arrested in Russia in October 2023 and released in the unprecedented East-West prisoner swap last August, called the case against Mehralizada 'a very unjust action against a journalist' and 'a political decision,' symptomatic of how press freedom is treated by authorities in countries like Azerbaijan or Russia.
'Authorities there don't believe in journalism as a profession, this is what I learned from my experience,' she said. 'They see journalists as agents of some secret services of different countries.'
By Dasha Litvinova
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBC
11 hours ago
- CBC
Kamloops mayor claims a journalist assaulted him. The journalist says it was a pat on the shoulder
Kamloops, B.C., Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson has filed a police report claiming a journalist assaulted him at a local pub. Hamer-Jackson said the incident happened at Bailey's Pub Saturday night after the Kamloops NorthPaws baseball game, when he saw Tim Petruk, the news director for Castanet Kamloops. "On his way out he decided he was going to hit me in the back and say, 'Have a good night,'" Hamer-Jackson said. "And I'll tell you one thing I know about Tim Petruk — the last thing on his mind was we need to have a good night." Petruk said no assault occurred. "I patted the mayor on the shoulder while saying goodbye," he said in an emailed statement. "I'm sure the pub has cameras showing exactly what happened." Hamer-Jackson denied that the interaction could be seen as friendly pat. "He walked up behind me; he whacked me in the back.… It would take a person of less than average intelligence to think in any way that it was a nice gesture," Hamer-Jackson said. The mayor said Petruk has repeatedly published "biased" articles and op-eds against him and specifically criticized an opinion piece Petruk wrote in 2024, in which he described Hamer-Jackson's treatment of another Kamloops journalist as "bullying for all to see." Petruk said the mayor is trying to use the police to "harass" a journalist after critical coverage. He added he hasn't heard from police, "only from reporters the mayor has been tipping off." "This will no doubt prove to be another baseless allegation made by the mayor and another waste of taxpayer resources getting the police to investigate his petty grievances," Petruk said. Hamer-Jackson has been no stranger to controversy since his 2022 election. He filed a in 2023, and in 2024, eight councillors formally asked him to resign as mayor. Hamer-Jackson declined to do so.
CTV News
15 hours ago
- CTV News
Tensions are rising between Russia and Azerbaijan. Why is this happening now?
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev enter a hall during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Oct. 8, 2024. (Valery Sharifulin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File) Deaths of ethnic Azerbaijanis rounded up by police for decades-old murders in a Russian city. The crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet that Baku blamed on Moscow. Growing ties between Azerbaijan and Turkey, along with waning Russian influence in the troubled South Caucasus region. These are among the factors that have led to the escalating tensions between Russia and Azerbaijan, the oil-rich Caspian Sea country where President Ilhan Aliyev has been in power since 2003 -- almost as long as the 25-year rule of Vladimir Putin in Russia. Here is a look at the previously warm relationship between Russia and Azerbaijan and what has happened: Economic ties between Russia and Azerbaijan Russia and Azerbaijan developed strong economic and cultural ties after 1993 when Aliyev's father, Heydar, who also was Azerbaijan's Soviet-era Communist boss, became president. Like Putin, the younger Aliyev has suppressed political foes and restricted independent media. Azerbaijan has bought oil and natural gas from Russia to meet internal demand while exporting its own energy riches to the West. Russia also has been the main market for Azerbaijan's fruit and vegetable exports. It also is a key transport corridor for Russia's trade with Iran and other partners in the Middle East. Azerbaijani businessmen control significant assets in construction, real estate, trade and other sectors of the Russian economy. Russia is home to a sizable Azerbaijani diaspora. A 2021 census listed about a half-million ethnic Azerbaijanis living in Russia, but unofficial estimates put that number as high as 2 million. Relations with Baku have become increasingly important for the Kremlin since it sent troops into Ukraine in 2022, especially as Turkey has become a key economic partner for Russia as it faced sweeping Western sanctions. The Karabakh separatist conflict Just before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, an open confrontation erupted between two of its former republics in the South Caucasus — Azerbaijan and its neighbor, Armenia. After years of fighting, Armenian-backed separatists won control of Azerbaijan's region of Karabakh and nearby territories. Russia claimed neutrality in the conflict even though it provided economic assistance and supplied weapons to Armenia that hosted its military base. Moscow cosponsored peace talks under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, but they didn't produce a deal. In 2020, Azerbaijan's military, bolstered by weapons supplied by ally Turkey, recaptured broad swaths of territory that were held for nearly three decades by Armenian forces. Russia brokered a truce and deployed about 2,000 peacekeepers to the region. Azerbaijan reclaimed full control of Karabakh in September 2023 after a lightning military campaign. Russia, busy with its war in Ukraine, didn't intervene, angering Armenia's leadership that responded by scaling down its ties with Moscow and bolstering relations with the West. The victory in Karabakh has fueled Azerbaijan's ambitions and prompted Aliyev to take a more assertive stand in relations with his neighbors. The crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines flight On Dec. 25, 2024, an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet crashed while on a flight from Baku to Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya. Azerbaijani authorities said the jet was accidentally hit by fire from Russian air defenses, then tried to land in western Kazakhstan when it crashed, killing 38 of 67 people aboard. Putin apologized to Aliyev for what he called a 'tragic incident' but stopped short of acknowledging responsibility. Aliyev, meanwhile, criticized Moscow for trying to 'hush up' the incident. In May, Aliyev declined to attend Russia's Victory Day parade in Moscow alongside other leaders of ex-Soviet nations. Later that month, a Ukrainian foreign minister visited Baku, a sign of closer ties with Kyiv. Police raids lead to heightened tensions On June 27, police raided the homes of several ethnic Azerbaijanis in Yekaterinburg, Russia's fourth-largest city, in what authorities said was part of an investigation into murders dating back decades. Brothers Huseyn and Ziyaddin Safarov died and several other ethnic Azerbaijanis were seriously injured. The bodies were sent to Azerbaijan, where authorities attributed the deaths to 'post-traumatic shock caused by multiple injuries.' The Prosecutor General's Office said the brothers were subjected to beatings and other physical abuse by Russian police. Azerbaijan responded by calling off previously scheduled Russian official visits and cultural events. On Monday, masked police stormed the Baku offices of Sputnik Azerbaijan, a Kremlin-funded media outlet, and arrested seven of its employees. Police also rounded up eight other Russian IT experts and other professionals, who were accused of drug trafficking and cybercrime. Images of the detainees, who didn't have any known criminal record, showed their faces were badly bruised. The images caused outrage in Russia where many hawkish commentators accused Azerbaijan of treating Russians as hostages and urged a tough response. Russia on Tuesday briefly detained the leader of the Azerbaijani community in Yekaterinburg for interrogation. A video on Russian social media showed special forces breaking the windows of his vehicle, dragging him and his son out, and making them lie face down on the pavement. A prominent member of the Azerbaijani diaspora also was arrested in Voronezh in southern Russia. Tough talk from Baku and Moscow Azerbaijan strongly condemned what it called 'the demonstrative and deliberate acts of extrajudicial killing and violence' by Russian police following the deaths in Yekaterinburg. After the arrests of the Sputnik employees and other Russians in Baku, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Azerbaijan's ambassador to protest 'the recent unfriendly actions of Baku and the intentional steps of the Azerbaijani side aimed to dismantle bilateral relations.' Azerbaijan shot back by summoning the Russian ambassador to demand a probe into the deaths, punishment for those responsible and compensation for the victims — steps it said were 'crucial for eliminating the negative atmosphere in bilateral relations.' It shrugged off Moscow's complaints about the arrests of Russians in Baku Aliyev discussed the tensions with Russia in a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, an act that seemed designed to rile the Kremlin. Zelenskyy said he expressed support for Baku 'in a situation where Russia is bullying Azerbaijani citizens and threatening the Republic of Azerbaijan.' Asked about the call, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that 'Ukraine will do everything possible to add fuel to the fire and provoke the Azerbaijani side to continue emotional actions.' Peskov noted that the head of Russia's top investigative agency has been in contact with Azerbaijan's chief prosecutor. He wouldn't say if Putin would speak to Aliyev to defuse the crisis.
CBC
2 days ago
- CBC
Stepping off the Trump treadmill: A CBC correspondent bids farewell to Washington
I got a journalism tip over drinks from a veteran Canadian correspondent when I first landed in Washington more than a decade ago — a formula for stories guaranteed to thrill audiences back home. In summary? The more ridiculous Americans look, the better. Guns, rednecks, cultural stereotypes, I was told, if you've got that, you've got gold. Canadians eat that stuff up. The exchange never left me. As I depart Washington a dozen years later, it's still on my mind, and not because it was inaccurate. I'll confess, on occasion, I had my fun. A piece of personal trivia: I met Lauren Boebert years before she became famous as a rabble-rousing congresswoman. I popped into her restaurant near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains whose main news draw was that the waitresses all carried guns. "It's not just the fried jalapeños packing heat," is how I began my Canadian Press story. "A spicy hamburger, here, comes with a side of handgun." Over time, though, that type of story got old. Like gorging on empty calories — briefly fun, ultimately unfulfilling. Here I was, reporting from a nation that's won more Nobel Prizes than a string of runners-up combined. It's produced a staggering number of patents, thriving metropolises, inventions spanning the assembly line to the internet, not to mention the blues, jazz and rock 'n' roll. Surely there were more useful tales from this place? Surely it's more than a backdrop for ego-stroking entertainment — a comedy to mock, a tragedy to pity. To be fair, every country has its quirks, flaws and tragedies. But we'll talk politics in a second. The America behind the camera Let's start with an accurate stereotype. Anybody in our community of foreign correspondents can confirm it: Americans are easy to interview. Absent rare exceptions, they love to talk. This can be jarring to a foreigner, especially if you come from a country with a culture rich in talking points and "No comment" responses. But here, you stick a mic in someone's face, and before you know it, you're invited into the kitchen, you're having coffee, your notepad's suddenly filling up with their life story. I'm thinking of all those people who spilled their lives out to me, a total stranger. People who've cried, even offered me hugs when I left. I was blessed to criss-cross this country and talk to people thousands of kilometres apart — literally and figuratively. People who, if seated together, might barely last a minute chatting politics without arguing. But they shared a willingness to talk to me, and, by extension, to you. They like Canadians, by the way; even now, the vast majority of Americans do. The feeling lately is not mutual. The news from Washington has Canadians aggrieved and angry. There's plenty to be aggrieved about. Much of the news is disturbing lately. But the news is a finite window onto the world. Its lens captures tragedy, better than it does the countless cases of everyday decency. Like the 100-year-old woman I just met — on a sidewalk, protesting because she's worried about health care and education for future generations. I stopped seeing the U.S. as a two-dimensional entity on a screen as it became the surroundings of my life, filled with people and places in three dimensions. In some circles, this is referred to as going native. I don't think so. What I encountered was layer after layer, of story after story, and found it harder to tell. It's more work, and less fun, writing stories sprinkled with qualifiers — however s and although s and not quite s. I'll pick a classic example of our national difference: health care. The canonical story is straightforward — it's public in Canada, private in the U.S., and that's how it goes. The reality's messier. Nearly 40 per cent of Americans have public health care. In Canada, it's 72 per cent publicly funded. It's a notable difference, yes, but perhaps not Venus and Mars. A decade-plus on the Trump treadmill I recall a specific case of starting to see the world through American eyes. It was the day of the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022. I read a take from a European commentator who felt no sympathy for Americans — after all, he said, these people keep voting for this. He saw the country as an entity. I saw my toddler. She mentioned a delightful teacher of hers during the ride home from daycare that day. I had just read about a teacher murdered while defending students, and I remember feeling my chest and throat flip upside-down in the car. I was enraged when I read that commentator's casual slur. Reducing this place to an amoral monolith wasn't just cruel — it ignored this country's reality of constant debate, fierce fights and razor-thin politics, where a fraction of one per cent of the electorate shifting across three states can alter the course of history. Now let's talk about Donald Trump. We can only avoid him for so long. Here's a snapshot of life covering this president. It's top of mind because it happened to unfold on June 4, while I was planning this piece. It all occurs within 22 minutes. It's bathtime. I'm preparing the kids for bed. One, two, three major news stories land while I'm soaping, shampooing and towelling. Here's my perspective as the White House emails a string of executive orders, as experienced through my smartwatch: 7:40 p.m. Ping! Trump bans travel from 12 countries. 7:45 p.m. Ping! Trump launches investigation into predecessor, hints he may invalidate past pardons, opening door to prosecuting enemies. 8:02 p.m. Ping! Foreign students banned from Harvard. In the time this happens, I field several demands for attention, and foil one plot to stuff cotton balls into the bath drain. There's no time to cover any of them the next day. By then, Trump is at war with Elon Musk. A day later, a twist in a burgeoning constitutional crisis. And there's a tense standoff — masked immigration officers against protesters, escalating Trump's battle against the state of California, in which he eventually shatters generations of precedent by taking over the state National Guard. WATCH | The final days of the Trump-Musk bromance: Will Donald Trump and Elon Musk destroy each other? | About That 20 days ago Duration 15:38 How did two of the most powerful men on the planet — Donald Trump and Elon Musk — go from friends to foes embroiled in a public meltdown? Andrew Chang explains what drove a wedge between them and why it may be in their best interests to reconcile sooner rather than later. Images provided by Getty Images, The Canadian Press and Reuters. (Additional credits: 4:35 - MSNBC/YouTube; 4:37 - CNN/YouTube; 4:29 - CBS News/YouTube) By the end of the month, he'd bombed Iran, threatened new tariffs, suspended trade talks with Canada, then un-suspended them. It's a marathon. Except when you're about to reach the finish line, someone moves it another few dozen kilometres down the road. Watching a political system fall apart I thought it was over on Jan. 6, 2021. I stood among the crowd that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Trump's behalf. Indelible memories of that day include riding on the Washington, D.C., metro, hearing Trump supporters speculate about a military execution for Vice-President Mike Pence. One scene that stuck with me was rioters berating police for not joining them. A man in his 60s, standing in the street with a buddy, heckled officers: "What side are you on?" This is the kind of scene that happens at the outset of a civil war in countless other places: Who are the police backing? What about the army? It just doesn't happen across the river from the Pentagon. Not between the Capitol and the White House, on, of all places, Constitution Avenue. So I briefly thought Trump was finished. That assessment was fleeting. I'd written before Jan. 6, and wrote again after, about him coming back. WATCH | How the U.S. Capitol riot unfolded: How the siege on the U.S. Capitol unfolded 4 years ago Duration 3:44 It became obvious by 2023 that he could be president again, and I listed his plans for a second term. Most of what he's doing now was in the platform. His plans included a global trade war, which I started writing about more than a year ago. It's been more chaotic than expected, but it was coming. After he won, I wrote that Trump would squeeze Canada on three fronts: trade, the border and military spending. And here we are. I saw him nominated twice, inaugurated twice, come back from a shooting once, convicted once, and I spent so many hours seated behind him in a Manhattan courtroom that if you gave me a pen and a cocktail napkin, I could sketch from memory a patent application for that inimitable hairdo. WATCH | Alex Panetta on Trump being convicted of falsifying business records in May 2024: CBC's Alex Panetta was in the courtroom as the Trump verdict came in. Here's what he saw 1 year ago Duration 1:18 The most important story is still unfolding. After his first-term near-overthrow of a constitutional republic, and his second-term stress-test on it, we're on the precipice of the previously unthinkable: the United States of America losing its ranking as a full-fledged democracy. I felt a disorienting melancholy as I typed those words in a story earlier this year. Had I remained here through 2028, I'd have been covering Trump's story for 13 years. A country of optimists loses faith I'll never forget my first morning in Washington, in 2013. It was love at first sight. On a morning walk north of Dupont Circle, I got John F. Kennedy's pollster on the phone for stories about the 50th anniversary of his death. An elderly Lou Harris described how JFK had sent him on a secret mission to Canada, carrying a fake passport, to help Lester Pearson defeat John Diefenbaker. Foreign election interference? The Russians didn't invent it. I received this oral history lesson while strolling about pastel-coloured Victorian rowhouses, and while it was almost December, it was as balmy as late summer, the trees still blazing red and yellow. I recall thinking, I'm never leaving here. But now I am leaving. For a couple of years, at least. I'm going to get a master's in artificial intelligence policy, spend more time with my kids and join my wife on a diplomatic posting. I got advice when I arrived here; now I'm happy to give some. There are little tricks for finding news that affects Canada. The U.S. domestic story presents a separate challenge. One day, you'll cover Trump courting a constitutional crisis; the next, he'll do something outrageous, controversial, the cable networks will be all over it, but it might be legal, even popular, and it's your job to figure out which story matters. Good luck! Also: Never forget that Trump didn't emerge in a vacuum. He identified problems Americans had concluded their political class failed to solve. Survey after survey shows Americans gloomy about the state of their country, and Trump found a receptive audience. WATCH | How Trump pulled off a comeback: How Trump pulled off his historic comeback win 8 months ago Duration 6:50 In a stunning political comeback, Donald Trump expanded his coalition with more popular support than ever. The National asks political strategists Kevin Sheridan and Aisha Mills to break down his winning campaign, and what the next four years could hold. A famously optimistic people has lost faith in its institutions. That celebrated ingenuity? It's fallen behind China in patents per capita. Life expectancy? Down, too. Note that areas suffering the most opioid deaths swung most heavily to Trump. Because it's more impactful hearing this from one of Trump's supporters, I'll quote Tucker Carlson: "Happy countries don't elect Donald Trump president. Desperate ones do." Trump set the tone by launching his political career 10 years ago this month in a speech laced with bigotry. He promised renewed greatness if America stood up to three forces, all foreign: illegal immigration, trade deals and military spending overseas. I became increasingly convinced Trump would win again as the election approached last year. I visited a bellwether district in Pennsylvania, talking to less politically engaged voters — working-class folks in an overwhelmingly Latino area. They were upset about inflation. They weren't reading mainstream news. And they certainly weren't following the specifics about just who had stalled Joe Biden's agenda; they blamed the party in power, the Democrats. Trump managed to reach apolitical voters like these. Democrats haven't. The parts of the country that are politically engaged are hyper-polarized, and I got to report on the different poles. I spent time with people on both sides of heated fights — the Canadian-connected Keystone XL oil pipeline; policing and crime; water rights; and migration. I've stood at the Mexican border, talking to families about their perilous journey. I've also walked that desert with members of a militia clutching AR-15s, and heard from locals fed up with illegal crossing. I only experienced hostility once. In the runup to Jan. 6, outside a Trump rally, a supporter started swearing, pulling middle fingers, trying to rile up the crowd as reporters boarded the media bus, shouting: "Fake news! Hey everybody, it's the fake news bus!" That was it. It's the only hostility I encountered in 12 years as a reporter in the U.S. I never encountered any as a Canadian — just one yappy guy at a hockey game. A story to remember My favourite story involved a road trip. The country was reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccines were being distributed. And I visited a place I called the fertile crescent of American song, a small sliver of geography that gave the world the blues, rock 'n' roll and country music. The musical soil was sprouting back to life in a Mississippi blues joint, in Elvis Presley's first recording studio in nearby Memphis and on the Grand Ole Opry stage in Nashville. It wasn't an entirely happy story — it rarely is. COVID wasn't over. But this was mostly joyful. It was about humans doing their thing again, in a language without borders. It's an extraordinary country. I won't pretend I'm not worried about it. But I'm pulling for it. WATCH | CBC visits a region renowned for music as it emerges from COVID lockdown: Post-pandemic life: The party's back in a U.S. region renowned for music 4 years ago Duration 6:01 Oh, wait, sorry. I'd planned to end my piece right there but just remembered something I feel compelled to add. I am emphatically not rooting for the United States on one specific front: international ice hockey. In that domain, I crave its defeat, and that's exactly what happened as I watched February's Four Nations final from New Orleans. A funny thing occurred, though. I received celebratory texts from American friends and neighbours. A couple said they were rooting for Canada — they didn't like our country being insulted, and wanted it to win. I never put that in a news story. But I thought you should hear it. It's a big, complicated country, with people who defy clichés. You won't see them all on TV, but they're every bit as American. And they're still there.
