This blog may have been the first news source anywhere (or at least the first non-Azeri source) to confirm that Adnan Hajizade was actually released from prison – although RFE/RL was apparently first to report the court’s decision to release him. See attached two superb pictures taken by freelance journalist Turkhan Karimov.
Karimov emailed me, saying that he talked to Hajizade upon his release: “I’m not a hooligan. I’m a video blogger and I’ll be blogging again,” Hajizade said. Karimov says that Hajizade spent time in prison reading books and “American newspapers.” According to a piece from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Baku bureau, Hajizade speculated that his friend and fellow donkey blogger Emin Milli may also be released soon, perhaps on 19 November when a hearing is scheduled.
This news is of course cause for celebration, but Hajizade emphasized that he is innocent, and wants eventual exoneration. I have been reporting on this story for quite some time here at the Caucasus blog and at ISN Security Watch this year and in 2007, and it should be remembered that Azerbaijan’s gutsiest journalist, Eynullah Fatullayev, remains incarcerated on separate charges, including libel, tax evasion, and (ridiculously) instigation of terrorism and inciting ethnic hatred.
Amnesty International puts it this way: “The arrest and imprisonment of prisoner of conscience Eynulla Fatullayev, who has a record of outspoken journalism, are the culmination of years of harassment by the Azerbaijani government. Amnesty International believes him to be a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for exercising his right to peaceful free expression.”
The guy has been assaulted, his father was kidnapped, and years after he was thrown in prison on phony charges, he was brought up on additional charges of heroin possession. Fatullayev has gone on two hunger strikes, and the European Court of Human Rights has ordered Azerbaijan to release him and pay a 25,000 euro fine. Although the government has essentially told the Court to, um, be fruitful and multiply, the Azerbaijan Supreme Court dismissed the original charges against him on 11 November.
However, the heroin conviction still stands.
Does this mean that a release of Fatullayev is in the offing as well? That’s a tough call, since as I’ve said in the past, Fatullayev is the one journalist in the country who makes everyone uncomfortable. So they either let him rot for another year or so, or release him soon, reasoning that if the original charges are now null and void, he has perhaps served enough time for the “drug possession.”
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