OSCE BLASTS AZERBAIJAN FOR JAILING PROMINENT JOURNALIST

Voice of America
Nov 1 2007

Europe’s top security organization says Azerbaijan’s jailing of a
prominent journalist is an example of officials using repressive laws
aimed at "criminalizing journalism and silencing critical voices."

A spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
also called the eight-and-a-half-year sentence given Eynulla Fatullayev
the "culmination of a [government] campaign to silence" the journalist.

Fatullayev was sentenced Wednesday on charges of making terrorism
threats and inciting national hatred. The charges stem from a story
he published listing targets in Azerbaijan that Iran could attack,
if the United States attacks the Islamic republic.

Local news reports say the court found Fatullayev’s article contained
the threat of terrorism, after several government officials wrote
letters to prosecutors saying they felt threatened by the story.

Fatullayev is already serving a separate 30-month prison term following
conviction on charges of defaming Azerbaijan’s armed forces.

This grew out of a published interview in which an ethnic Armenian
leader in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region described a massacre
of Armenians by Azerbaijani soldiers in the 1990s.

European leaders, Western diplomats and international rights groups
have strongly criticized the government of Azerbaijani President Ilham
Alliyev for suppressing media freedoms in the former Soviet republic.