CPJ - 7 Azerbaijani journalists with anti-corruption outlet  go on trial

The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Azerbaijani authorities to drop charges against six members of the anti-corruption investigative outlet Abzas Media and freelance journalist Farid Mehralizada, with U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Azerbaijani service, as a trial began Tuesday in the Serious Crimes Court of the capital, Baku.

“The trial of RFE/RL’s Farid Mehralizada and six members of Azerbaijan’s most prominent anti-corruption investigative outlet, Abzas Media, epitomizes the way the Azerbaijani government has used retaliatory criminal charges to lock up vast swathes of the country’s leading independent journalists over the past year,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Azerbaijani authorities should immediately drop the charges against nearly two dozen journalists, including Mehralizada and the Abzas Media staff, who are currently on or awaiting trial and release them all.”

Police arrested Abzas Media director Ulvi Hasanli, chief editor Sevinj Vagifgizi, project coordinator Mahammad Kekalov, and reporters Hafiz Babali, Nargiz Absalamova, and Elnara Gasimova between November 2023 and January 2024 on charges of conspiring to smuggle currency, accusing the outlet of illegally receiving Western donor funds. In May, police arrested Mehralizada, an economist who contributed anonymously to RFE/RL, as part of the Abzas Media case, though both Abzas Media and Mehralizada denied that he was connected to the outlet.

These journalists are among more than 20 journalists and media workers charged with serious crimes in a major crackdown on the independent press and civil society in Azerbaijan since November 2023. Most of the journalists, who hail from some of Azerbaijan’s most prominent independent media, have been arrested on similar currency smuggling charges related to alleged Western funding, amid a decline in relations between Azerbaijan and the West.

In August, authorities brought seven additional economic crime charges against the Abzas Media journalists and Mehralizada, including tax evasion and money laundering, which could see them jailed for up to 12 years.