12 May 2017
A district court in Baku today ruled in favor of a lawsuit blocking access within Azerbaijan to the website of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Azerbaijani Service, azadliq.org.
RFE/RL President Thomas Kent said, “Today’s ruling is another blatant attempt by Azerbaijani authorities to try to silence our reporting in Azerbaijan. It misrepresents RFE/RL’s work in Azerbaijan, and violates Azerbaijan’s international commitments to respect media freedom. We will appeal it.”
The Sabail district court in Baku ruled that the Ministry of Transport, Communications, and High Technology’s request to block access to the websites of five news outlets — RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service, the nongovernmental Azadliq newspaper (unrelated to azadliq.org), Meydan TV, and the online Turan TV and Azerbaycan Saati TV channels — must be carried out.
Access to the websites has been blocked since March 27 on the instructions of the Prosecutor General’s Office, which claims that the websites “pose a threat” to Azerbaijan’s national security, and accuses them of “posting content deemed to promote violence, hatred, or extremism, violate privacy, or constitute slander.”
The March blockage followed the publication of investigations by the Azerbaijani Service, in cooperation with the Sarajevo-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, on financial activities linked to members of the president’s family and inner circle. The Service also recently published reports raising questions about costs associated with a September 2016 referendum that extended the term of presidential office from five to seven years, and created the post of Vice President, to which President Ilham Aliyev appointed his wife earlier this year.
According to Azerbaijani legislation, a guilty judgement by the court against azadliq.org could be used as grounds to prosecute the website’s correspondents. In 2014, authorities imprisoned prominent investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova on charges of encouraging an attempted suicide and financial crimes in a case that foreign governments and rights advocates condemned as politically motivated.
Ismayilova’s arrest came just weeks before Azerbaijani state agents raided and sealed RFE/RL’s Baku bureau, forcing it to close in May, 2015. In December 2008, RFE/RL was formally banned from FM airwaves by Azerbaijan’s National TV-Radio Council, but continues to engage with its audience via satellite and online social media platforms.
(Source: RFE/RL press release)
2 August 2016
An Azerbaijani court will convene on August 3 to hear RFE/RL’s appeal against tax-related claims that were used by the government as grounds to shut down the company’s Baku bureau in December 2014.
“The commercial court should affirm that all claims brought against us are baseless, and the prosecutor should move without delay to unfreeze our Baku bureau’s bank accounts, return the company seal, stamp and documents that were confiscated in December 2014, unfreeze the personal bank accounts of our Baku staff members, and let us get on with our journalistic mission of providing independent news and information to the people of Azerbaijan,” said RFE/RL President Thomas Kent (pictured).
Earlier this year Azerbaijan’s Supreme Court effectively threw out two claims against RFE/RL’s Baku bureau when it overturned two charges against RFE/RL journalist Khadija Ismayilova (pictured right), leading to her release from prison in May. Of two remaining allegations against RFE/RL, one involves the Azerbaijani government’s interpretation of a bilateral tax treaty that exempts U.S. nonprofit organisations from corporate income tax. The other relates to the process of accrediting journalists, which the Azerbaijani government revised effective July 1 this year, and with which RFE/RL is in compliance.
RFE/RL was forced to close its Baku bureau in May 2015, after it was raided by Azerbaijani authorities on December 26, 2014. Agents with the prosecutor’s office confiscated company property, interrogated over 20 staff members without legal representation, imposed travel bans on employees, and froze company and personal bank accounts pursuant to a tax inspection on unspecified grounds.
The raid came just weeks after the top advisor to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev published a statement in the country’s official media calling RFE/RL journalists spies and threats to the country’s national security.
Despite the closure, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service has continued to actively engage audiences in Azerbaijan via satellite and the Internet, attracting nearly 1.5 million visits per month to its website, and more than 20 million views on YouTube during the first six months of 2016.
21 January 2016
The announcement by international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney that she will defend RFE/RL contributor Khadija Ismayilova before the European Court of Human Rights has raised the profile of the case along with hopes among media freedom advocates that the additional attention will help secure Ismayilova’s release.
Ismayilova told RFE/RL today through her Baku lawyer that she accepted Clooney’s offer because of the courage Clooney demonstrated while defending imprisoned Al-Jazeera journalist Mohamed Fahmy in Egypt in 2014.
RFE/RL Editor in Chief Nenad Pejic welcomed the announcement, saying “Amal Clooney’s decision to take the case is a powerful affirmation of Khadija and her journalism,” adding, “It’s a triumph for media freedom already. I know that with their combined strength they will win.”
Ismayilova, an internationally recognized investigative journalist from Azerbaijan, was sentenced in September, 2015 to over seven years in prison on spurious tax and finance-related charges that are widely believed to have been brought in retaliation for her reporting on corruption linked to members of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s family. Not a single witness testified against Ismayilova in a trial that rights groups called a “sham.”
International criticism of the Azerbaijani government and Ismayilova’s imprisonment reached a high point in December, 2015 with the introduction of H.R.4264, the Azerbaijan Democracy Act. Introduced by Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe U.S. Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ), the bill would impose sanctions on Azerbaijani officials implicated in human rights abuses.
Clooney will represent Ismayilova together with Nani Jansen, head of the London-based Media Legal Defence Initiative. (Source: RFE/RL press release)
1 September 2015
A Baku court today sentenced investigative journalist and RFE/RL contributor Khadija Ismayilova to seven and a half years in prison on charges widely believed to be retribution for her reporting on corruption linked to Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and members of his family.
Ismayilova was convicted on charges of criminal libel, tax evasion, illegal business activity, and abuse of power. She was barred from holding public office for three years and fined the equivalent of 300USD for court-related expenses. She was acquitted of the charge of incitement to suicide.
“Khadija’s case is an example of politics, not law. There was no merit, ever, to any of the charges against her and there was no due process during her trial.” said Nenad Pejic, RFE/RL’s editor in chief. “The authorities simply decided to silence her at any price.”
In her final testimony in court on August 31, a defiant Ismayilova delivered her own blistering indictment of Azerbaijan’s justice system, mocking the prosecution for failing to put together a convincing case and schooling the judge on the charges against her. She called the trial a “poor quality scam” and said, “I am more successful in this business of finding proof than is the notorious prosecutor’s staff.”
During the trial, not a single witness testified against Ismayilova in court.
In a public statement condemning the sentence, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatovic, called on the Azeri government “to stop targeting journalists.” The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists stated that the sentence would have “gravely serious” consequences for Azeri journalists. Speaking as a member of the Sport for Rights Coalition of media advocacy and human rights groups, the PEN American Center’s Karin Deutsch Karlekar called on the Azeri government to stop “this unprecedented witch-hunt against journalists.”
Ismayilova was arrested on December 5, 2014 for inciting an individual to attempt suicide Her accuser sought to withdraw the allegation, testifying in a pre-trial hearing in July that he had “defamed” her under pressure from law enforcement agencies, but the court rejected a defense motion to drop the charge.
Additional charges of money laundering, illegal entrepreneurship, tax evasion, and abuse of authority, all purportedly related to her work for RFE/RL, were brought against her in February, 2015. Ismayilova ridiculed the charges in her closing statement for their arbitrariness and lack of proof. They were previously refuted by RFE/RL in a point-by-point statement sent to Azerbaijan’s general prosecutor and the judge presiding in the trial.
One day before Ismayilova’s arrest, Rahmiz Mehtiyev, senior adviser to President Aliyev, published a 60-page tirade accusing RFE/RL journalists of treason. Three weeks later, on December 26, Azeri state agents raided and sealed RFE/RL’s Baku bureau, seizing documents, corporate stamps, and equipment. They then interrogated more than 20 members of its staff. The bureau is closed and, according to the prosecutor’s office, remains under investigation in connection with RFE/RL’s status as a “foreign agent.”
RFE/RL continues to gather news and report inside Azerbaijan for its website, www.azadliq.org. Several of its employees have fled the country in fear and others work under duress, subject to interrogations, frozen bank accounts, and threats.
(Source: RFE/RL press release)
30 July 2015
America’s National Press Club presented its highest press freedom prize to jailed Azeri investigative reporter and RFE/RL contributor Khadija Ismayilova (pictured) on 29 July. Ismayilova has been held in pretrial detention in a Baku prison for 234 days on charges many observers link to her investigations of high-level corruption involving Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, and which could bring a prison sentence of 19 years.
RFE/RL Editor in Chief Nenad Pejic accepted the award on Ismayilova’s behalf, saying “Khadija is in prison because of her journalism…This award is an acknowledgement of her courage and her convictions, but it is also a call to all of us here tonight to condemn her imprisonment and demand her freedom.”
Each year, the National Press Club presents its John Aubuchon Press Freedom Awards to reporters or others who manifest the values of a free press. Other recipients of the 2015 award are Austin Tice, who has been detained in Syria since 2012, and Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter who has been imprisoned in Iran for more than a year – also on charges widely believed to be politically motivated.
On July 24, dozens of journalists, activists, foreign diplomats, and supporters gathered in front of a court building in Baku to attend the first hearing in Ismayilova’s trial. Most of them were not allowed to enter the courtroom to observe the proceedings. A judge rejected motions to dismiss the criminal case and to grant Ismayilova house arrest as a substitute for pretrial detention, and ordered Ismayilova to return to court on August 7.
During the hearing, Ismayilova addressed the court, declaring that President Aliyev “has imprisoned me to hinder my journalistic activity. But even though I‘m here, my colleagues continue their investigations.”
Among the many organisations advocating for her freedom, the Committee to Protect Journalists called on Azeri authorities to release Ismayilova “as a crucial first step in addressing Azerbaijan’s tarnished image which reached a new low amid the European Games last month.”
