Azeri court sentences editor of independent newspapers to 2.5 years for libel

AP Worldstream
Published: Apr 20, 2007

An Azeri court convicted the editor of two independent newspapers
of libel Friday and sentenced him to 2 1/2 years in prison, court
officials said.

Opposition leaders called the ruling part of a government campaign
to silence critical media.

Eynulla Fatullayev, editor and founder of newspapers Real Azerbaijan
and Everyday Azerbaijan, was found guilty of disseminating false
information about a 1992 attack during the country’s six-year war
with Armenia.

The suit had been filed in a Baku district court by a member of a
refugee group who claimed that Fatullayev had said on a Web site that
Azerbaijanis were also to blame for the assault, a court spokesman
said.

Authorities say 613 Azerbaijanis were killed when Armenian forces
on Feb.

26, 1992, attacked the village of Khodzhaly, in the disputed territory
of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian forces do not deny the attack, but say
the death toll is exaggerated.

"Eynulla Fatullayev said in court that he had never written that
Azeris were killed by Azeris," his lawyer Isaxan Asurov told The
Associated Press.

Asurov argued that his client had made no false statements, and that
he should not be prosecuted for libel as Internet discussions did
not amount to media publications.

The Opposition Party of National Independence of Azerbaijan condemned
the ruling, saying in a statement that it amounted to authorities
"pressuring, intimidating and persecuting independent media and
freedom of speech."

Last year, a court gave Fatullayev a two-year suspended sentence for
libeling a top law enforcement official.

The government of President Ilham Aliev, who took over from his
father in a 2003 election denounced by opponents as a sham, has faced
persistent criticism over the heavy-handed treatment of independent
media.