Azerbaijan Jails Reporter Who Angered Top Officials

A court in Baku on Friday ordered the jailing of a prominent journalist who has long drawn the ire of the Azerbaijan government by reporting on the business dealings of President Ilham Aliyev’s family, as well as on accusations of human rights abuses, including the persecution of opposition figures and other activists.

The reporter, Khadija Ismayilova, works for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is financed by the United States government, and her jailing in connection with charges that she nearly drove a man to suicide was the latest and most drastic development in a sharp deterioration of relations between Azerbaijan and the West.

In Washington, a State Department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said that Ms. Ismayilova’s arrest appeared to be part of a broader crackdown. “Broadly speaking, we are deeply troubled by restrictions on civil society activities, including on journalists in Azerbaijan, and are increasingly concerned that the government there is not living up to its international commitments and obligations,” Ms. Harf said.

Journalists and lawyers in Azerbaijan said that the government had clamped down harshly on individuals and organizations with ties to the West in recent months, apparently out of rising concern that the United States and its allies were behind the uprising that toppled President Viktor F. Yanukovych of Ukraine in February, and could be planning similar unrest in other former Soviet republics.

On Thursday, the Azerbaijan government released a 60-page manifesto, written by the presidential chief of staff, Ramiz Mehdiyev, in which he complained of modern “colonialism” by the United States, and accused employees of Radio Free Europe’s Azerbaijan service, Azadliq Radio, of treason and seeking to please “patrons abroad.”

Mr. Mehdiyev singled out Ms. Ismayilova as “the best example” of journalists working against the government. “She puts on anti-Azerbaijani shows, makes absurd statements, openly demonstrates a destructive attitude towards well-known members of the Azerbaijani community, and spreads insulting lies,” he wrote.

“There is no need to prove that the provision of false information is the same as working for the foreign secret service,” he wrote. “This is treason.”

The manifesto also criticized Leyla Yunus, a well-known civic activist, who was jailed along with her husband, Arif Yunus, in July. Those arrests were also criticized by the State Department.

Ms. Ismayilova, 38, has long been a target of the government. She and her supporters had expected that she would be arrested, though the precise timing of Friday’s order, for at least two months of pretrial detention, came as a surprise.

In 2012, Ms. Ismayilova received a letter warning that she would be “shamed” if she did not stop investigating connections between Mr. Aliyev’s family and business deals related to expensive building projects in Baku, the capital. The letter included a still picture from a video of her having sex with her boyfriend; the video was later posted on the Internet.

Earlier this year, Ms. Ismayilova said she was summoned for questioning and accused of leaking government secrets to two United States Senate staff members whom she had met in Baku. In October, she was detained for four hours at the Baku airport upon returning from a trip to Strasbourg, France, the seat of the European Parliament. The government then banned her from traveling outside the country.

Her arrest, however, was apparently related to accusations by a man who said that she had nearly driven him to suicide. Friends of Ms. Ismayilova said that she had a romantic relationship with the man, Tural Mustafayev, but now believed he had been working for the authorities all along.

On Friday, she was summoned to a prosecutor’s office, then taken to the Sabail district court. Her telephone, which she had answered earlier in the day, was suddenly shut off.

In an interview with Radio Free Liberty, Ms. Ismayilova’s lawyer, Elton Guliyev, called the charges “absurd.”

Kenan Kazimoglu, the head of the radio network’s Azerbaijan service, said in an interview that there had been signs the government was hoping Ms. Ismayilova would not return from the trip to France.

“Anyone who knows Khadija, they know she’s not going to be running away,” Mr. Kazimoglu said. “This is obviously just to shut her down and scare everybody else, because she is the most outspoken.”

In Washington, Radio Free Europe’s editor in chief, Nenad Pejic, issued a statement condemning her arrest.

“The arrest and detention of Khadija Ismayilova is the latest attempt in a two-year campaign to silence a journalist who has investigated government corruption and human rights abuses in Azerbaijan,” Mr. Pejic said. “The charges brought against her today are outrageous. Khadija is being punished for her journalism.”