The Baku Court of Grave Crimes has handed out lengthy sentences to the management and journalists of Abzas Media, one of the last independent Azerbaijan news sites operating in the country.
On Friday, the court sentenced Abzas Media’s director, Ulvi Hasanli, editor-in-chief, Sevinj Abbasova (Vagifgizi), and investigative journalist Hafiz Babali to nine years in prison on charges of smuggling foreign currency as a group and money laundering. Journalists Nargiz Absalamova and Elnara Gasimova were sentenced to eight years, and Mahammad Kekalov, a coordinator at Abzas, was sentenced to seven and a half years of prison.
Farid Mehralizada, a journalist at RFE/RL, was also sentenced to nine years. He was detained in June 2024.
Those convicted, as well as local and international rights groups, have dismissed the charges against them as politically motivated.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, an activist who was present in court told OC Media that the journalists met the verdict with a smile, and sang a song during the hearing.
As the verdict was announced, the journalists stood holding an image of Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva, the daughters of Ilham Aliyev, Baylar Ayyubov, the head of the president’s security services, and Ali Naghiyev, the head of the State Security Service. The image was the cover of an investigation published by Abzas Media in June 2022 documenting corruption in agriculture in areas in and around Nagorno-Karabakh.
The authorities raided the offices of Abzas Media and rounded up their team in November 2023. They were accused of smuggling money as part of a group.
Ismi Aghayev
During the investigation, several other charges were brought against them, including money laundering and obtaining property by criminal means.
On Thursday, a day before the verdict was announced, Amnesty International again called on the authorities to release the Abzas Media team.
‘They survived threats, pressure and injustice. Their only “crime” — telling the truth’, they wrote.
Afgan Mukhtarli, an Azerbaijani journalist who spent three years in an Azerbaijani prison after being kidnapped from Georgia, condemned Friday’s ruling, while criticising European leaders for being complicit in human rights abuses in Azerbaijan.
‘Today, by order of Dictator Aliyev, a court ruling resulted in the imprisonment of seven journalists from Abzas Media One week ago Germany signed a gas agreement with this murderous dictator European leaders are complicit in Aliyev’s crimes’, he wrote in a post on X.
The raid on Abzas Media in 2023 was a renewal of a crackdown on independent media in Azerbaijan which began in 2012. That year, investigative journalist Khadija Ismail was blackmailed with intimate footage after she investigated the corruption of state officials. She was later imprisoned along with dozens of others.
Since 2023, the authorities have also moved to imprison or expel almost all other independent journalists left in the country.
In March 2024, police raided the offices of Toplum TV, as well as some of the employees’ homes. As a result, three journalists and five civil society members were arrested.
In December 2024, the authorities arrested six journalists from MeydanTV, an independent news site in exile in Germany. Four others have subsequently been arrested as part of the case.
Earlier this year, the government also cancelled the media accreditation of journalists from Voice of America, BBC Azerbaijan, and Bloomberg.According to Reporters Without Borders, 24 journalists and media workers are currently behind bars in the country, the eighth largest number in the world.
Aytan Farhadova
