TV Journalists from Dagestan Not Allowed to Azerbaijan

The crew of the TV Exclusive channel from Dagestan was detained at the entrance to Azerbaijan and returned back.

The channel’s journalist Murad Agamirov wrote about this from Derbent. Exactly when the incident occurred is not reported.

The author writes that he had long wanted to tell the audience about the musical culture of the Lezghi people in the Azerbaijan Republic. “To this end I obtained a passport, studied the Lezghian-Azerbaijani pop and decided to visit them... Basically, the pleasant part ended with that and severe customs events started!

Successfully passing the Russian part of the border, we were on the Azerbaijani side at 11:00. All was quiet and my operator with a bunch of trendy photo and video equipment passed the control flawlessly and went outside. There were no claims for him, but there was only admiration for the photographic equipment (the total amount of that in the backpack exceeded half a million).

It was my turn, with the tripod, the camera, the headphones and the microphone ... and here everything turned upside down. Instantly there was a feeling that I was crossing the US-Mexican border and was being exposed with a bag of marijuana.

All the higher customs management, the border guards, the KGB ... already proved that you cannot cross the border with photographic equipment without accreditation. But our operators constantly traveled to shoot videos and weddings and never had any problems.

In short, we were taken into a room, and all and sundry came to us, recorded our data, photographed our passports, identity cards and business cards, and disappeared for a few hours. We were not given any explanation as to the basis on which we were detained. They questioned something in Azerbaijani. Having received the answer that we do not understand the Azeri language, they nodded their heads, as if to show that everything was clear, and went away.

Further, some of the officers politely asked for my phone and read all of my personal correspondence on Facebook and looked at the gallery... All this performance lasted until seven o'clock in the evening!!! I.e. we were left without food, water or any clear explanation in the interrogation room for eight hours!!!

Frankly, it was obvious that the terminal workers themselves did not know what was happening; apparently the decision was made somewhere far away from there. The finish of this story came as fast as its beginning. A terminal worker came, took the passports and said that we were forbidden to enter. They put stamps in the passports and the escort brought us to the neutral zone. Our requests to provide a written explanation for what reason we were expelled from the country were met with a wall of silence.

So all finished! Azerbaijan sighed quietly!!! Thanks to the vigilant actions of the border guards, customs officials and the KGB, the country was protected from enemies, who wanted to capture the state through a microphone! Azerbaijan can sleep peacefully!” Agamirov wrote.

Our attempt to get a comment from the Border Service of Azerbaijan on the reasons not to let this TV channel group enter Azerbaijan failed. -02D-