The family members of Sevinj Abbasova (Vagifgizi), the imprisoned editor-in-chief of the Abzas Media, say they were mistreated by prison staff during their last visit with her on Saturday.
Vagifgizi’s mother, Ofelia Maharramova, told OC Media that she and her daughter were placed in a special inspection room at the Lankaran Penitentiary Centre before the meeting.
‘There were two guards, a woman, and a man. The male guard asked me to take off my shoes and I said that I can’t bend over to take off my shoes, I feel dizzy. I have a cardiac machine in my heart’.
Maharramova emphasised that the guard didn't even remove her shoes; he simply destroyed their insides as if was hoping to find something there.
‘It was very offensive, and I told them my daughter was arrested because she’s a journalist, not a drug dealer. It's an insult to me, the female guard put her hand down our pants’, Maharramova told OC Media.
Vagifgizi was transferred from the Baku Pre-trial Detention Centre to the Lankaran prison in September alongside Abzas Media journalists Nargiz Absalamova and Elnara Gasimova.
Aytan Farhadova
Lankaran is located on the southern side of the country and Maharramova stated that it took her six hour trip to and from the prison.
‘To be honest, we’ve never faced anything like this in the Baku Pre-trial Detention Centre. It was the first time. And that’s not all, during the meeting with Sevinj, another guard was with us. Afterward, Sevinj told them that if the guard ever participated in her meetings again, she would refuse them’, Maharramova said.
In June, the Baku Court of Grave Crimes sentenced Vagifgizi, Abzas Media’s director Ulvi Hasanli, and investigative journalist Hafiz Babali to nine years in prison on charges of smuggling foreign currency as a group and money laundering. Journalists Absalamova and 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.
The journalists denied all charges and stated that their arrests were related to their journalistic activities.
Aytan Farhadova
