Journalist Khadija Ismail wins legal battle against Azerbaijan at ECHR
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ordered Azerbaijan to pay investigative journalist Khadija Ismail €12,000 ($14,400) in compensation for her sentencing on charges of tax evasion and illegal entrepreneurship in the mid-2010s.
The court has also ordered Azerbaijan to compensate Ismail €4,000 ($4,800) for legal fees.
In its ruling published on Tuesday, the ECHR provided a timeline for the charges pressed against Ismail, which it said stemmed from her tenure as head of RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani service.
It noted that in November 2014, a former employee of Ismail’s accused her of inciting him to take his own life — charges she was detained under but were later dismissed by Azerbaijani courts.
She was charged with illegal entrepreneurship and tax evasion in February 2015, with the authorities accusing her of abusing her power by illegally employing individuals to work at RFE/RL on service contract, in breach of Azerbaijan’s labour code.
The illegal entrepreneurship charges stemmed from accusations that Ismail’s management of RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani service were illicit, given the expiration of the outlet’s broadcasting license in 2008. She was also accused of working for RFE/RL without accreditation from the Foreign Ministry as a representative of foreign media — given that RFE/RL’s main office was based in Prague.
She was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in December 2014 on these two charges, with the Supreme Court replacing the decision with a three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence in May 2016. This term, according to RFE/RL, was reduced to two years and three months.
Yousef Bardouka
