My personal blog, my thoughts.
Azad Hasanov, Musavat party member and political exile living in Lithuania, has been arrested during a short return to his home country and charged with drug trafficking.
According to his lawyer, Osman Kazimov, the Khatai District Court sentenced him to four months in detention on drug-related charges. Under Article 234.4.3 (illegal manufacturing, purchase, storage, transportation, transfer or selling of sale of drugs), Hasanov faces between five and twelve years in prison.
Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan, has won the first ever Organized Crime and Corruption Person of the Year bestowed by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). The award is given for the person who figured prominently in 2012 on stories on crime and corruption in its coverage area. Aliyev was chosen because of new revelations this year about how his family had taken large shares in lucrative industries including the telecom, minerals and construction industries often through government related deals.
The award is chosen by the 60 reporters and 15 news organizations that make up the OCCRP consortium. Runners-up included Albanian drug lord Naser Kelmendi, President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In September last year, a massive leak of bank records from 2012 to 2014 showed that the ruling elite of Azerbaijan ran a US$2.9 billion slush fund and an international money laundering scheme. Part of the money was used to help whitewash Azerbaijan’s international image, which had been rightly tainted due to grave human rights violations. European politicians, who took money to talk up Azerbaijan were complicit, along with European financial institutions that enabled the scheme.
Read more “THE AZERBAIJANI LAUNDROMAT ONE YEAR ON: HAS JUSTICE BEEN SERVED?”
What else you can expect from such government?
On 3 October, Azerbaijani journalist Aytaj Ahmadova was detained while filming a protest in Zabrat, a settlement close to Baku.
A group of citizens had been protesting against their desolate living conditions, demanding that the government renovated their unsafe homes which are in danger of collapsing.
Read more “Journalist Aytaj Ahmadova detained and physically pressured”
The number of political prisoners in Azerbaijan remains approximately the same from year to year. The president regularly signs pardon decrees but the “vacancies” on bunk beds in prisons are quickly occupied by newly-arrived opponents of the political elite of Azerbaijan.
The following is a Meydan TV report about how the possibility of pardon is used to manipulate political prisoners and how the prisoners themselves have become bargaining chips in the Azerbaijani government’s foreign policy.
YEREVAN, September 26. /ARKA/. Addressing the P the 73rd session of UN General Assembly in New York Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said the peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict continues to prevail on Armenia’s foreign policy agenda. In his words, the status and security of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) is an absolute priority of the Republic of Armenia in the negotiation process.
He said any attempt to resolve the conflict through military means represents a direct threat to the regional security, democracy and human rights.
Read more “Azerbaijani leadership’s intention is to cleanse Armenians from Karabakh, Pashinyan says”
Azerbaijani society has never been tolerant toward sexual minorities, but no one expected the cruel and large-scale violence that occurred last year. At least a hundred people were humiliated, beaten and raped. People who were suspected of being gay were blackmailed and warned not to walk in the central streets of Baku. Meydan TV investigated the possible reasons for the police violence immediately after it happened last year and we now return to this topic to find out what has changed in Azerbaijan over the past year.
Article by Leyla and Arif Yunus.
June 28, 2018 was exactly 40 years from the date of our marriage. But we did not celebrate this date. We now live not in our native Baku, where we regularly arranged happy family holidays, celebrated anniversaries in the circle of loved ones where we could visit the graves of our parents … In April 2016 we were forced to leave our homeland to save our life and health so as not to leave our daughter Dinara orphaned.
Read more “Mr. Macron, “Ilham Aliyev’s hands are stained with the blood of innocent victims””
It has been a busy month for the Cyber Security Service at Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Transport, Communication and High Technologies.
Since early August, the service has targeted a number of independent news websites – first requesting them to remove specific content, and later blocking access to these websites altogether. The blocking came after the websites featured articles on the corrupt practices of certain government officials, other stories merely reported on local grievances. Editors and journalists have been summoned to the prosecutor office for questioning over the published articles, though the editors are reluctant to comply. In their public statements, editors say there was no slander nor misinformation in any of the articles published.
Read more “Azerbaijan’s blocking of websites is a sign of further restrictions online”
The country of Azerbaijan has issued an arrest warrant for Dan Bilzerian, the social media celebrity with the lavish lifestyle known as the “King of Instagram.”
PEOPLE confirms that the Investigative Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Azerbaijan has initiated a criminal case against Bilzerian, alleging he illegally visited Nagorno Karabakh, a region that is the subject of a conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Authorities allege that Bilzerian illegally acquired grenades and firearms before “demonstratively” opening fire at a shooting range.
Read more “‘King of Instagram’ Dan Bilzerian Has Warrant Out for His Arrest in Azerbaijan”