Azerbaijan’s State Security Service (DTX) has detained a man for allegedly blackmailing President Ilham Aliyev’s family. The man, who has only been identified by the initials F.S., was recorded by the DTX stating that he had demanded €5 million ($5.8 million) in order to not release intimate videos of Aliyev’s daughter-in-law, Alyona Aliyeva.
In a video published in January 2026, the DTX stated that bloggers Mehman Huseynov, his brother Emin Huseynov, Gabil Mammadov, and others spread defamatory material on various social media platforms about Aliyeva, including that she was an escort, and had met her husband, Heydar Aliyev Jr, through that line of work.
In the DTX video, the man identified as F.S. expressed that on 11 February, he had sent a message to Huseynov’s social media page Sanjaq Media (‘Pin Media’) and asked him for Aliyeva’s intimate footage. Later, he reportedly received a video from social media users Elman Aliyev and Mammadzaki Salimov, claiming that they also had footage of Aliyeva. Both live abroad in Europe.
F.S. later told DTX that he was sceptical about the credibility of the video, but still decided to message the official social media pages of Mehriban Aliyeva, Ilham Aliyev’s wife and Azerbaijan’s Vice President, and their daughters Arzu and Leyla Aliyeva.
On 15 February, he sent an email to the Heydar Aliyev Foundation.
‘As I saw that they did not respond to me on 18 February, I sent the same message to Javid Gurbanov [Deputy Minister of Digital Development and Transport]. He communicated with me and I demanded money from him’.
After the news broke about the alleged blackmail, Elman Aliyev shared a video on YouTube claiming that the person involved was Russian citizen Farid Salmanov.
‘I have known him for many years and know that he lives in Russia. He held a phone conversation with me and asked to send Alyona Aliyeva’s video to him, but I did not send him anything’, Elman Aliyev said.
Salmanov has a YouTube channel and social media pages where he criticises the Azerbaijani government and Ilham Aliyev. Videos on his YouTube channel show him wearing the same shirt as the man shown in the DTX video.
Mehman Huseynov told OC Media that the allegations from the DTX were false, that the man had never contacted him, and he did not know him.
‘My videos were published on 21 January, but in the DTX video, this man claimed he tried to blackmail the Aliyev family on 11 February. Did he want to sell the published materials? DTX information is illogical’, Huseynov said.
Aytan Farhadova
