My personal blog, my thoughts.
STEPANAKERT, Artsakh (A.W.)—Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabagh) Ombudsman (human rights defender) Ruben Melikyan said Azerbaijan has failed in its plan of limiting international coverage and activity in Artsakh since the arrest of Russian-Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin.
Two French journalists accused by Azerbaijan’s government of defamation for calling the country a “dictatorship” appeared for a hearing at a French court Tuesday, in an unusual case that activists call an effort to export censorship, AP reported.
Read more “French journalists in court accused of defaming Azerbaijan”
TO CELEBRATE “National Press Day” in Azerbaijan on July 22, President Ilham Aliyev announced the award of 255 apartments to journalists. Four years ago, he inaugurated an apartment building for journalists and gave away 155 flats. Both times, Mr. Aliyev used the same words. “Freedom of speech” is “ensured” in Azerbaijan, he declared.
Read more “In Azerbaijan, some journalists get free apartments. Others get jail cells.”
Azerbaijan’s ruling elite operated a secret $2.9bn (£2.2bn) scheme to pay prominent Europeans, buy luxury goods and launder money through a network of opaque British companies, an investigation by the Guardian reveals.
Read more “UK at centre of secret $3bn Azerbaijani money laundering and lobbying scheme”
Last month, I wrote about Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva’s revelations that Azerbaijan’s state-run Silk Way Airlines had shipped 350 planeloads of heavy weapons and ammunition to terrorist groups in Syria and many other countries in the last three years, under diplomatic cover.
On Aug. 24, Dilyana tweeted: “I just got fired for telling the truth about weapons supplies for terrorists in Syria on diplomatic flights.”
Read more “Azerbaijan Forces Bulgaria to Fire Reporter Who Exposed Arms Shipments to Terrorists”
Baku / 12.08.17 / Turan: The Monitoring Center for Political Prisoners strongly condemned the criminal investigation against the Turan News Agency on charges of tax evasion.
The human rights organization regards this as a prejudiced and politically motivated step.
Read more “Criminal Investigation against Turan Politically Motivated – Human Rights Activist”
Azerbaijani political prisoner Abbas Huseynov has been tortured in a prison (popularly known as the Gobustan prison), in which he is held and which belongs to the Azerbaijani Justice Ministry’s Penitentiary Service. Abbas Huseynov is a deputy to the leader of the Muslim Unity movement, Taleh Baghirzadeh. The torture was carried out by the prison governor, a deputy prison chief and several guards, Huseynov told his defence lawyer Yalchin Imanov. The lawyer told us about what happened in the notorious high-security prison for especially dangerous criminals, which is located 70 kilometres outside Baku.
Read more “How political prisoners are tortured in Azerbaijan”
On 8 August, Azerbaijani tax authorities launched an investigation of Turan News Agency. Local civil society activists and international human rights organizations believe this investigation is aimed at the termination of the activities of the last independent media outlet in the country. On 24 August Mehman Aliyev, the director of the news agency and a well-known journalist was sentenced to three months pretrial detention on charges of tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurship and abuse of power. As a result, Turan announced that it planned to suspend its operations as of September.
Read more “Shrinking space for Azerbaijan’s last independent voices”
Statement of The Working Group on Unified List of Political Prisoners on the Detention of Mehman Aliyev and the Suspension of Turan News Agency’s Activities
The Working Group on Unified List of Political Prisoners is dismayed by the news of the detention of the director of Turan News Agency, Mehman Aliyev, and the suspension of the only remaining independent news media in Azerbaijan – Turan News Agency.
The State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan (SCC) failed to register $24.8 billion worth of imported goods from 2010-2015, resulting in a loss for the state budget of about $5 billion in taxes. The SCC blames importers, but experts say that the Prosecutor’s Office should launch an investigation.
According to the SCC, in the first ten days of April 2017 importers underreported the value of goods entering Azerbaijan by 2.4 million AZN (about $1.4 million). Noting that some individuals and legal entities had submitted false invoices to avoid tax payments, the Committee announced that it had collected an additional 895 thousand AZN in taxes and transferred the amount to the state budget.
Read more “Azerbaijan Customs Committee fails to report billions in imports”