CPJ, New York, 16 Sep 2008—One editor is dead and another is jailed in a case that exposes the disastrous state of press freedom in Azerbaijan, the strategically important, oil-rich nation on the Caspian Sea, the Committee to Protect Journalists says in a new report, “Finding Elmar’s Killers.”
CPJ’s investigation found that editor Eynulla Fatullayev was jailed in reprisal for his reporting on the 2005 murder of Elmar Huseynov—a slaying that has gone unsolved. Huseynov, one of the country’s leading independent journalists, was a vocal critic of President Ilham Aliyev’s administration.
After Fatullayev’s reports cast doubts on the Azerbaijani government’s investigation, he found himself subjected to threats and arrest. Fatullayev is now serving a prison term of eight and a half years on a variety charges that CPJ has found to be fabricated. The most serious was a terrorism charge based on an article that analyzed the impact of U.S. military action in the region.
Fatullayev is not alone. Azerbaijan has become the leading jailer of reporters in Europe and Central Asia. At the height of the country’s crackdown, at least 10 critical reporters and editors were jailed on trumped-up charges such as defamation, drug possession, hooliganism, and terrorism. In the last three years, CPJ found, at least eight other independent journalists have been abducted, beaten, or stabbed. All of the assault cases are unsolved.
“With Fatullayev behind bars and other journalists under attack, there is virtually no ongoing scrutiny of the Huseynov murder in the press,” CPJ’s Nina Ognianova writes in her report. “The secretive official investigation has yielded no arrests, and CPJ found no tangible evidence of progress.”
The report is available online, in English and Russian, and will appear in the coming edition of CPJ’s magazine Dangerous Assignments.
CPJ is a New York–based, independent, nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide. For more information, visit www.cpj.org.
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