CPJ URGES AZERBAIJAN TO END PERSECUTION OF IMPRISONED EDITOR
CPJ Press Freedom Online, NY
June 8 2007
New York, June 7, 2007-The Committee to Protect Journalists is calling
on Azerbaijani authorities to release an editor imprisoned on libel
charges who says he has been denied food and water, and has received
death threats.
Eynulla Fatullayev, editor of the independent Russian-language
weekly Realny Azerbaijan and the weekly Azeri-language daily Gundalik
Azarbaycan, told presiding judge Hamid Hamidov that he has been kept
in inhumane conditions since his transfer to the National Security
Prison from the Bailov Prison in Baku on May 29.
"For nine days, I have been hungry and thirsty," Fatullayev was
quoted as saying by the Institute for Reporter Freedom and Safety,
a local press freedom group. The journalist has been forced to sleep
on an iron bed without a mattress and has received multiple death
threats from unknown persons, according to the Moscow-based news
agency Regnum and local press reports.
The judge upheld his libel conviction in the court session Wednesday.
CPJ called on Azerbaijani authorities to investigate the threats and
release Fatullayev from prison.
"The Azerbaijani government jailed Eynulla Fatullayev on a spurious
libel charge, then filed a vague terrorist charge against him,
and harassed and intimidated his staff to the point they could
no longer work. Now they have forced him to suffer while in their
custody," said Joel Simon, CPJ’s executive director. "We call on
the Azerbaijani authorities to end their relentless persecution of
a critical journalist and release Eynulla immediately."
National Security Ministry spokesperson Arif Babayev dismissed the
journalist’s statements, calling them a "subjective opinion," the
news Web site Lenta reported. "Former ministers have served time in
our cells and they didn’t complain," Lenta quoted Babayev as saying.
In April, Fatullayev was sentenced to 30 months in prison on charges of
libeling and insulting Azerbaijanis by saying in an Internet posting
that Azerbaijanis were responsible for the 1992 massacre of residents
of Khodjali, a town in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh
claimed by both Armenia and Azerbaijan. In a March interview with CPJ,
Fatullayev said he never made the Khodjali statement, which was later
posted on other Web sites.
Authorities filed an additional charge of terrorism against Fatullayev
on May 22. Government officials claim the journalist, a persistent
government critic, assisted Armenian Special Forces, but they have not
elaborated on the charge, according to CPJ sources and local press
reports. The new charges came only days after fire officials sealed
the papers’ offices, claiming the building housing the publications
violated fire safety regulations.
CPJ is a New York-based, independent, nonprofit organization that
works to safeguard press freedom worldwide. For more information,
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