Zeinab Zeinalli, a 25-year-old TikToker known on social media as ‘Koti’, was charged with publishing obscene statements and openly displaying disrespect for society, the Prosecutor General’s Office reported on Saturday.
The pro-government media outlet Okhu.az reported that Zeinalli was remanded in custody for eight days, as it was not her first criminal offence related to her social media activity.
Earlier in November 2025, she was fined ₼600 ($350) for promoting illegal gambling on Instagram.
According to Okhu.az, she posted obscene statements and ‘openly displayed disrespect for society on a page with approximately 300,000 followers’.
‘These actions are also classified as petty hooliganism if publicly displayed on social media’.
Zeinalli also admitted her ‘guilt’ in court, acknowledging she had ‘insulted those who spoke negatively about her on social media’, but expressed remorse and promised not to repeat her behaviour in the future.
Aytan Farhadova
‘The judge sentenced her to eight days detention, citing her large number of followers and repeated inappropriate posts. She was taken directly from the courtroom to a pre-trial detention facility’, wrote the publication.
Zeinalli’s case comes after the adoption of a new law policing information and social media activity that came into force in January.
Despite that, the arrest of the TikTokers for ‘immoral content’ has been ongoing since 2024.
In April 2024, the Interior Ministry confirmed to OC Media that over the first three months of that year, 60 TikTok users have been punished on various charges for their posts.
The spokesperson for the ministry could not clarify under which charges those TikTokers were punished, as legislation policing social media content did not exist at the time.
Aytan Farhadova
Human rights lawyer Fariz Namazli told OC Media that when similar incidents occurred in the past, suspects were held administratively liable for police failure to comply with legal requirements.
‘Then, authorities, noticing an excessive increase in obscene language and insults on social media, decided to prevent it. The legislation has now been amended, but this is incomplete, as there are no precise criteria for determining what expressions are offensive, contrary to morality, and immoral’.
Namazli emphasised that court decisions in such cases also demonstrate that ‘the courts fail to substantiate their findings or explain why a person’s opinions are considered immoral and contrary to national moral values’.
Zeinalli is the latest social media content creator to have been detained under the new amendments.
On 17 February, two Tiktokers, Sardar Majnunov (Serdar Inanki) and Rena Jafarova (Renka), were remanded to 20 days in jail and fined ₼750 ($440), respectively, for allegedly publishing content with ‘obscene expressions or gestures’.
In early February, queer TikToker Salman Mamedov, who runs the social media page Velizarofficial, was arrested and sentenced to 30 days of detention for ‘promoting immorality’.
Aytan Farhadova
