The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Chair, Isabel Santos (MP, Portugal), called for the immediate release of Azerbaijani investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, who was sentenced earlier on 1 September to 7 ½ years in prison.
“Ms. Ismayilova has earned several awards for her reporting. The reward she got today from her country’s justice system was a harsh prison term. It is clear to me that this is a politically motivated response to Ms. Ismayilova’s work to hold her country’s leaders accountable. With every journalist, human rights defender and civil society leader it harasses or jails, Azerbaijan distances itself further and further from democratic values and OSCE human dimension commitments.
I call on the authorities to abandon their authoritarian practices and immediately release Ms. Ismayilova, along with the numerous human rights defenders, civil society leaders and other journalists currently and unfairly behind bars,” - Santos said.
Chairperson Santos also reiterated her request to visit Ismayilova, which she first submitted to the government of Azerbaijan in February.
Ismayilova’s reporting for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty focused on alleged high-level corruption in Azerbaijan.
Chairperson Santos also noted that within the Helsinki Declaration, the wide-ranging final document endorsed by parliamentarians at the OSCE PA’s 2015 Annual Session, the Assembly “condemn[ed] the continued persecution and imprisonment on politically motivated charges of journalists and human rights defenders in several OSCE participating States and express[ed] its concern at the continued misuse of tax and administrative legislation to justify these acts.”
Santos once again expressed her openness to direct engagement with the Azerbaijani authorities on these matters. -0-
Politics
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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev called President of the United States Donald Trump on 25 November.
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Director of the Institute of Political Management, political scientist Azer Gasymly has been summoned to the Main Police Department of Baku at 16:00 today. He wrote about it in facebook.
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Adalyat Verdiyev, the head of the civil defense staff at the public legal entity Center for Public Health and Reform under the Ministry of Health, and a military expert, has been arrested. On November 22, during a media tour to the liberated territories, Verdiyev filmed and published information and images on his social media accounts revealing Azerbaijani Armed Forces' combat positions in the heights, deployment sites, coordinates, and operational conditions of the border troops. This disclosure caused significant damage to the interests of state security and defense capability. This was stated in a report from the General Prosecutor’s Office.
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On Monday, the Baku Appeals Court considered the appeal of Talysh researcher Iqbal Abilov against the extension of his detention for another four months. The defense argued that the decision to extend Abilov's detention was unjustified, lawyer Fariz Namazly told reporters.
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