Watchdog

Azerbaijan's independent Turan News Agency says prosecutors have dropped all charges against it and its director.

The agency said that the Prosecutor-General's Office on November 2 informed the agency’s director, Mehman Aliyev, that Turan now can fully resume its operations.

Aliyev was also told that all restrictions that had been placed on his movements were lifted.

"Common sense prevailed thanks to the pressure that rights groups, the United States, and the European Union have exerted on the Azerbaijani government," Aliyev told the AFP news agency.

Turan's operations were largely suspended in September after Aliyev was detained in Baku on August 24 on charges of tax evasion and abuse of power.

Turan called the charges "trumped up" and the arrest was widely denounced as a politically motivated stifling of independent media by Western governments and rights groups.

Aliyev was released from pretrial detention and placed under house arrest on September 12, and Azerbaijani authorities days later reinstated their tax claim against the agency.

Turan was established in 1990. It publishes reports in Azerbaijani, English, and Russian, and cooperates with leading international news agencies.

President Ilham Aliyev, who has ruled the South Caucasus country of nearly 10 million people since shortly before his father's death in 2003, has been criticized for cracking down on media and civil rights in the former Soviet republic.

Azerbaijan is currently ranked 162nd out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ 2017 World Press Freedom Index.

With reporting by AFP

The Kremlin has rejected opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s claim that President Vladimir Putin and his administration are coordinating efforts to thwart his campaign for the March 2018 presidential election.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Dozhd television channel on November 2 that the presidential office has nothing to do with the issuance of official permissions to organize mass gatherings in Russian cities and towns.

The comments came a day after Navalny said that in recent days, authorities across Russia have refused to let him and his team organize public meetings with voters.

Navalny wrote on his website that he has no doubt that the obstacles are being "coordinated" personally by Putin, asserting that the president is concerned by the number of people attending his rallies.

He said he plans to sue Putin and his administration.

He also said that his staff would start holding campaign meetings on private land to avoid the need to obtain permission from local authorities.

Navalny is campaigning for the election in defiance of officials who have said he is not eligible to run because of a felony embezzlement conviction that he says was politically motivated.

Putin, who has held power as president or prime minister for 18 years, has not announced his candidacy but is widely expected to seek a fourth Kremlin term.

His control over the levers of power would make his reelection a foregone conclusion.

Navalny, who has riled the Kremlin with reports alleging corruption in Putin's government, received 27 percent of the vote in a Moscow mayoral election in 2013.