Press freedom group calls on Azerbaijan to solve murder of opposition magazine editor

The Associated Press
04/08/05 13:05 EDT

BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) – An international press freedom group on Friday
called on Azerbaijan to fully investigate the shooting death of an
opposition magazine editor and bring his killers to justice.

Robert Menard, who heads the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders,
said finding Elmar Huseinov’s killers would show that the Caspian
Sea nation valued press freedoms and democracy.

“We are very concerned about the murder of Elmar Huseinov,” Menard
told a news conference in Baku. “I don’t see any serious work in
this direction and the continuing facts of violence and pressure
toward journalists resulted in the death of this journalist.”

Huseinov, founder and editor of the opposition magazine Monitor, was
found dead in the lobby of his apartment building in Baku on March 2.
Police said he was shot four times in the heart and the side.

The opposition has blamed the former Soviet republic’s leadership for
Huseinov’s killing. President Ilham Aliev has countered by calling
the murder a provocation for unrest.

Menard said Interior Minister Rameli Usubovi told him in a meeting
Friday that the murder had a political motive, possibly to destabilize
the country. He suggested foreign countries, such as Azerbaijan’s
regional rival, Armenia, may have had a role.

Tension between the government and the opposition has increased since
the October 2003 election, in which Aliev replaced his father, longtime
leader Geidar, as president in a vote the opposition said was marred
by fraud. Several opposition leaders, including newspaper editors,
have been sentenced to prison over unrest that followed the election.

The Monitor has been published and sold privately since a decision
forbidding the state printing and distribution company from selling it.