TALLINN, Estonia — A court docket in Azerbaijan on Friday convicted a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist and 6 others on a number of costs, handing down jail sentences starting from 7 1/2 to 9 years in jail, RFE/RL and native media reported.
The decision in opposition to RFE/RL’s Farid Mehralizada and 6 journalists from Abzas Media, an impartial Azerbaijani investigative outlet, marks the basketball escalation within the nation’s crackdown on media. All seven journalists have dismissed the costs as politically motivated, and worldwide rights teams have known as for his or her launch.
Mehralizada, a journalist with RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani service and an economist, was sentenced to 9 years in jail, RFE/RL reported. 9-year sentences had been additionally handed to Abzas Media’s director Ulvi Hasanli, chief editor Sevinj Abbasova (Vagifqizi) and investigative journalist Hafiz Babali. Reporters Nargiz Absalamova and Elnara Gasimova had been sentenced to eight years in jail, and deputy director Mahammad Kekelov — to 7 1/2 years, Abzas Media stated.
Reporters With out Borders (RSF) in an announcement Friday condemned the sentences as “outrageous” and “the result of a purely political trial primarily based on fabricated costs, geared toward silencing voices that expose corruption and injustice.”
“The Azerbaijani authorities might imprison journalists, however they can not imprison the reality,” the group’s editorial director Anne Bocandé stated. “RSF requires the rapid launch of all Abzas Media defendants and urges worldwide actors to accentuate strain on Baku.”
RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus in an announcement Friday stated Mehralizada was “unjustifiably detained” and known as for his launch.
“Farid has already misplaced an amazing deal. Unjustifiably detained for greater than a 12 months, he missed the start of his youngster, and now waits for elusive justice. Denying this man his basic rights is unnecessarily merciless. As a substitute of perpetuating this sham, it’s time to reunite Farid along with his household,” the assertion learn.
Six Abzas Media journalists had been arrested in November 2023. The authorities claimed that that they had discovered 40,000 euros in money within the outlet’s workplace in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, and accused them of conspiring overseas foreign money into Azerbaijan.
Mehralizada was arrested in Could 2024 as a part of the identical case, regardless that each him and Abzas Media stated that he by no means labored for the outlet. Later that 12 months, authorities levied further costs in opposition to Mehralizada and Azbas Media journalists, together with unlawful entrepreneurship, tax evasion, doc forgery and others.
In his closing assertion to the court docket, which RFE/RL shared with The Related Press, Mehralizada stated that “the reality is that I’ve not dedicated any crime…Impartial media is among the best technique of service to the state, the nation, and humanity. Sadly, journalism in our nation right now is sort of equated with terrorism.”
Weeks earlier than Mehralizada’s arrest, in March 2024, Azerbaijani authorities focused one other information outlet, Toplum TV, with raids and arrests on comparable costs. In December 2024, Azerbaijani authorities arrested six more journalists on smuggling charges, together with 5 of these working for the impartial Meydan TV information outlet.
Earlier this 12 months, authorities withdrew press credentials from Voice of America and Bloomberg and shut down the BBC’s workplace in Azerbaijan.
In a January 2025 report, Amnesty Worldwide stated Azerbaijani authorities “have systematically silenced impartial media by means of politically motivated arrests” and that these arrests, in addition to shutting down impartial information shops, “display Azerbaijan’s continued crackdown on the appropriate to freedom of expression and media independence, with fabricated costs weaponized to stifle free media.”