Authorities “clarified”: journalists are to blame

Baku / 14.02.20 / Turan: Today, a group of independent journalists was invited to the prosecutor's office in Baku, where he received an official warning for participating in the February 11 protest in front of the CEC building.

This press was reported by freelance journalists: Nurlan Jafarli, Nurlan Gahramanli, Rafael Huseynzade and Avaz Hafizli.

"The official warning said that the prosecutor’s office conducted an investigation and established that on February 11 at 19 o’clock a group of persons conducted an action not coordinated with the authorities, which paralyzed the traffic, led to reasonable discontent among others, disrupted the operation of business facilities, and generally disrupted the socio-political order. In the suppression of this illegal action, there were violations of journalistic ethics, unethical acts and unlawful interference in police actions.

We were accused of all this, although we were not there at the indicated time, we arrived there later,” Avaz Hafizli noted.

“We filmed what was happening without interfering with all of this. On the contrary, it was the police that insulted us and exerted physical pressure after the rally in the courtyard of the hospital,” he said.

According to him, several journalists lost their phones. “Instead of returning the phones, we were accused of making video shoots and sending them abroad to pro-Armenian forces. All this is nonsense and we refused to sign this warning, demanding an objective investigation.

It was not possible to get a comment from the city prosecutor's office. -0-