Appeals court upholds criminal libel sentence of two journalists
New York, April 13, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a Baku Appeals Court decision today to uphold the convictions of two journalists with the independent weekly Nota Bene on charges of defaming Interior Minister Ramil Usubov in a series of articles that described corruption and infighting in the agency. The court let stand a…
Azerbaijan editor receives death threat after report on colleague’s murder
New York, March 7, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a death threat against an editor in the capital Baku, four days after he reported that high-ranking officials there ordered the murder of his colleague Elmar Huseynov. On Tuesday afternoon, Editor Eynulla Fatullayev, of the independent Russian-language weekly Realny Azerbaijan and Azeri-language daily…
Azerbaijani journalist’s murderers remain at large on second anniversary
New York, March 1, 2007—Two years after the contract-style assassination of opposition editor Elmar Huseynov, his murderers remain at large. When Huseynov, an editor and founder of the newsweekly Monitor, was gunned down in his Baku apartment building on March 2, 2005, President Ilham Aliyev called the murder a “provocation against the Azerbaijani state” and…
Attacks on the Press 2006: Countries That Have Jailed Journalists
ALGERIA: 2 Djamel Eddine Fahassi, Alger Chaîne III IMPRISONED: May 6, 1995 Fahassi, a reporter for the state-run radio station Alger Chaîne III and a contributor to several Algerian newspapers, including the now-banned weekly of the Islamic Salvation Front, Al-Forqane, was abducted near his home in the al-Harrache suburb of the capital, Algiers, by four…
Attacks on the Press 2006: Europe and Central Asia Analysis
Getting away with murder in the former Soviet states By Nina Ognianova The assassin in a baseball cap who gunned down Anna Politkovskaya outside her Moscow apartment used a silencer. But reverberations from the contract-style slaying of Russia’s icon of investigative journalism were felt around the world.
Attacks on the Press 2006: Azerbaijan
AZERBAIJAN Two prominent journalists were viciously assaulted in unsolved attacks, and the 2005 murder of another top reporter was wrapped in questions. President Ilham Aliyev and his allies used the courts as a hammer against the independent media, filing criminal defamation lawsuits, lodging spurious drug charges, and imprisoning critical journalists. Interior Minister Ramil Usubov, the…
Attacks on the Press 2006: Countries That Have Jailed Journalists
ALGERIA: 2 Djamel Eddine Fahassi, Alger Chaîne III IMPRISONED: May 6, 1995 Fahassi, a reporter for the state-run radio station Alger Chaîne III and a contributor to several Algerian newspapers, including the now-banned weekly of the Islamic Salvation Front, Al-Forqane, was abducted near his home in the al-Harrache suburb of the capital, Algiers, by four…
Two journalists sentenced for defaming interior minister
New York, January 31, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the criminal libel convictions of two journalists in a suit filed by Azerbaijan’s interior minister who has launched a barrage of defamation suits to silence independent media. Reporter Faramaz Novruzoglu and Editor-in-chief Sardar Alibeili of the weekly independent newspaper Nota Bene were sentenced…
Court extends journalists’ pretrial detention
New York, January 12, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores a Baku court’s decision to extend by two months the pretrial detention of two journalists accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Editor-in-Chief Samir Sadagatoglu and reporter Rafiq Tagi of the independent newspaper Senet were arrested on November 15, after publishing an article that alleged Islam’s…