A court in Baku on Friday ordered the jailing of a prominent journalist who has long drawn the ire of the Azerbaijani government by reporting on the business dealings of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s family, as well as on accusations of human rights abuses, including the alleged persecution of opposition figures and other activists.
Khadija Ismayilova works for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is financed by the US government, and her jailing — in connection with charges that she nearly drove a man to suicide — was the latest and most drastic development in a sharp deterioration of relations between Azerbaijan and the West.
In Washington, US Department of State spokeswoman Marie Harf said Ismayilova’s arrest appeared to be part of a broader crackdown.
“Broadly speaking, we are deeply troubled by restrictions on civil society activities, including on journalists in Azerbaijan, and are increasingly concerned that the government there is not living up to its international commitments and obligations,” Harf said.
Journalists and lawyers in Azerbaijan said the government had clamped down harshly on individuals and organizations with ties to the West in recent months, apparently out of rising concern that the US and its allies were behind the uprising that toppled former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in February, and could be planning similar unrest in other former Soviet republics.
On Thursday, the Azerbaijani government released a 60-page manifesto written by presidential chief of staff Ramiz Mehdiyev in which he complained of modern “colonialism” by the US, and accused employees of Radio Free Europe’s Azerbaijani service, Azadliq Radio, of treason and seeking to please “patrons abroad.”
Mehdiyev called Ismayilova “the best example” of journalists working against the government.
“There is no need to prove that the provision of false information is the same as working for the foreign secret service,” he wrote.
The manifesto also criticized Leyla Yunus, a well-known civic activist, who was jailed along with her husband, Arif Yunus, in July. Those arrests were also criticized by the US.
Ismayilova, 38, has long been a target of the Azerbaijani government. She and her supporters had expected that she would be arrested, though the timing of Friday’s order for at least two months of pretrial detention came as a surprise.
Her arrest was apparently related to accusations by a man who said that she had nearly driven him to suicide. Friends of Ismayilova said she had a romantic relationship with the man, Tural Mustafayev, but now believed he had been working for the authorities all along.
In an interview with Radio Free Liberty, Ismayilova’s lawyer, Elton Guliyev, called the charges “absurd.”
Kenan Kazimoglu, head of the radio network’s Azerbaijan service, said in an interview that there had been signs the government was hoping Ismayilova would not return from a trip to France.
“Anyone who knows Khadija, they know she’s not going to be running away,” Kazimoglu said. “This is obviously just to shut her down and scare everybody else, because she is the most outspoken.”
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