Consideration of the appeal by Anar Mammadov

Baku/08.05.19/Turan: On 8 May, the Baku Court of Appeal held a preliminary hearing on the case of the Chief Editor of the Criminal.az website, Anar Mammadov, who was sentenced to a suspended sentence.

During the trial, lawyer Elchin Sadigov requested to call two witnesses to the court again.

The lawyer explained this by the fact that the testimony of Malahat Mammadova and Samira Janyeva "shocked" by publications on the site were distorted and rigged in the records of the proceedings in the court of first instance.

In addition, the lawyer petitioned for the request to the Ministry of Education for a diploma of higher education, involving Bakhtiyar Aliyev as an expert.

Aliyev does not have a corresponding higher education; the law prohibits expert opinion by a person who does not have a relevant specialty.

However, the court did not satisfy the petition and scheduled a substantive hearing on May 22.

In March of this year, Anar Mammadov was sentenced to 5.5 years of imprisonment with a two-year probation period on charges of anti-state appeals, abuse of power and official forgery. The reason for bringing him to criminal responsibility was the publication on the website criminal.az about the assassination attempt on the former head of the city of Ganja Elmar Veliyev.

A number of international journalistic organizations, as well as the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Arlem Dezir condemned the verdict against Mammadov. - 06B--