Watchdog

An Azerbaijani journalist says he has been forcefully returned from Georgia to Azerbaijan, where he says he is accused of illegally crossing state borders and of smuggling money, according to his attorney.

Lawyer Elchin Sadigov told RFE/RL that he met with his client Afgan Mukhtarli at the headquarters of Azerbaijan’s State Border Service in Baku on May 30, a day after the journalist said he was kidnapped by unknown individuals in Tbilisi.

“Afgan told me that unknown people forced him into an Opel car in Tbilisi near the place where he lives, and that those people in his opinion were from the Georgian secret services,” Sadigov said. “Afgan told me that he was beaten in the car, blindfolded. After two hours the car was changed. Then it was changed again. Afgan says in the third car people were speaking in Azeri.”

“When the third car stopped, they removed his blindfolds, put 10,000 euros, which he had never seen before, into his pocket. He saw that the location where they arrived was a crossing point at the Georgian-Azerbaijanii border. Afgan told me that after crossing the border he was brought to Baku.”

Sadigov said he saw bruises on Mukhtarli’s face and forehead. His client complained of "severe pain" and said he thinks that his ribs are broken, the lawyer added.

Georgia’s Interior Ministry said it had launched an investigation into the alleged “unlawful imprisonment” of Mukhtarli.

Mukhtarli left Azerbaijan three years ago. In Tbilisi, he has held protests in front of Azerbaijan’s embassy and recently wrote about the persecution of Azerbaijani activists in Georgia.

International rights defenders and Western governments have criticized the oil-producing former Soviet republic's government for persistent clampdowns targeting independent journalists and rights defenders.

MOSCOW -- It's the latest viral sensation sweeping the Russian web: a video of police dragging a Shakespeare-admiring boy away screaming after reciting poetry in public.

The video, which follows police as they forcibly remove the boy from one of Moscow's most popular tourist areas to a waiting squad car, was posted on May 27 on Facebook and within days had been watched over 2.6 million times.

The chattering classes expressed shock over the police’s rough handling of the child, who had been publicly reading lines from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But others called into question whether his parents should have allowed him to perform publicly in the first place. And some, including a top United Russia lawmaker, even suggested the incident was an elaborate setup to tar the reputation of the police.

The boy, who RFE/RL is not identifying by name because he is a minor, can be heard loudly protesting his detention, shrilly screaming "Help!" as three police officers lead him away as the boy's stepmother shouts agitatedly at the police.

The police claimed they detained the boy because he was not accompanied by his parents and was begging. The video shows the boy’s stepmother -- who only identifies herself to police as his "acquaintance" -- filming the May 26 incident and calling on police to free the boy.

Ilya Skavronski, the boy's father, said his wife had her clothes ripped and her tablet broken while struggling with the police. She could face 15 days on misdemeanor charges for resisting the police.

The boy, who was taken to a police station, was eventually handed over to his father and released.

Skavronski told RFE/RL’s Russian Service that his son has a speech defect and that "his therapist advised him to recite poetry publicly" as part of his treatment.

On May 28, several activists filmed by the Meduza news site protested the boy's treatment by standing outside the local police station in Moscow's central Arbat district and reading lines from Hamlet and holding a sign saying: "I’m reading Shakespeare for free for Arbat’s police officers."

An online petition -- which has no political weight and is little more than symbolic -- is calling for the dismissal of the police officers responsible for the arrest and had garnered almost 22,000 signatures by the evening of May 29.

The Investigative Committee said on May 27 they would probe the incident, while Tatyana Solomina, a lawyer for the family, said the deputy head of the regional police had apologized to the father. Russian media reported on May 29 that there had been no apology.

Over the weekend, discussion raged online.

"The country has been horrified and, it seems, has started to think. The consequences of this two-minute clip are entirely unpredictable for the regime. Or rather, they are entirely predictable. Not now, but tomorrow," wrote Andrei Chernov, a poet, on Facebook.

Leonid Gozman, an opposition-minded politician, wrote on Facebook that he sees some good consequences of the episode: "The boy and the many others who hadn't yet realized will now better understand the country they inhabit. ... The cops obviously will be punished -- this was too big a scandal -- and others will be more careful."