TikTok footage of military movement leads to arrest in Azerbaijan

On 17 March, Azerbaijan’s State Security Service (SSS) detained Samad Rustamov for filming the movement of military equipment of the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan. The SSS said that the distribution of such content was prohibited by law.

According to the preliminary investigation, the video was taken on 27 February 2025.

The SSS accused Rustamov of breaking the law by distributing the footage on his TikTok account on 15 March. The service later alleged that the footage was supplemented with video materials from different periods on social media, presenting various news stories as a source of information that did not reflect the truth.

They also claimed that on 17 March, ‘video footage of the movement of military equipment belonging to the Azerbaijani Army was distributed in the foreign segment of social networks, claiming that measures were taken to allegedly conduct military operations on the state border of the Republic of Azerbaijan’.

Based on their findings, Rustamov was detained and the mobile phone on which he recorded the videos was seized as material evidence.

Following this, the SSS once again stated that filming and disseminating on the internet, including on social media, footage related to military units of the Azerbaijani Army, their deployment, movement, combat and mobilisation training, weapons, and military equipment, entails criminal liability, and measures provided by law will be applied to persons who committed such acts.

Several months ago, pro-government military expert Adalat Verdiyev was also detained on similar charges.

RFE/RL reported that Verdiyev, who participated in a press tour of areas previously under Armenian control, demonstrated where the combat positions of the Azerbaijan forces were located, the deployment, coordinates, and conditions of the border troops.

‘There are reasonable suspicions that, having made a video with comments, he distributed it among an unlimited number of viewers through his account on a social network and also used his official powers in order to harm the interests of ensuring the security and defence capability of the state’, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement at the time.

Verdiyev was detained and accused of disclosing state secrets and abuse of his official position. Based on the charges, he faces up to seven years in prison.

As the pro-government media published this news, reactions to the news only were shown on the Qafqazinfo social media account. The users support the SSS and mentioned that such kind of posts harms the Azerbaijan military service activity and that ‘it should be a lesson for others, too’.

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