Watchdog

WASHINGTON -- The United States has welcomed the release from pretrial detention of Mehman Aliyev, the director of Azerbaijan’s independent Turan news agency, and called on the authorities in Baku to drop all charges against him.

“We ask the government to drop the remaining charges against him and allow Turan to perform its important work unhindered,” the State Department said on September 13.

“We further call on the authorities to build on this positive step by taking action to strengthen freedom of expression and other human rights in Azerbaijan,” the statement added.

Aliyev was charged by Azerbaijani authorities in August with tax evasion and abuse of powers. He denies any wrongdoing.

Authorities in Baku also have frozen all of the Turan news agency’s bank accounts during the ongoing investigation.

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Azerbaijani News Agency Director Put Under House Arrest

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Aliyev was released from pretrial detention on September 11 on the condition that he remain under house arrest until his trial, which has not yet been scheduled.

“I consider this decision as positive...I'm glad that mistake has been amended," the Turan director later said.

Turan was established in 1990 and has published online reports in Azerbaijani, English, and Russia. It also has cooperated with leading international news agencies about stories in Azerbaijan.

Many media-freedom groups and Western governments have condemned the actions against Aliyev and Turan, calling them politically motivated and part of a wider campaign designed to silence voices critical of the government.

In its statement, the U.S. State Department said the United States continues “to urge the government of Azerbaijan to release all those incarcerated for exercising their fundamental freedoms.”

Dozens of journalists have fled the country in recent years to escape the crackdown, according to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which says Baku is using “tax-evasion allegations to harass” Turan.

Azerbaijan is ranked 162nd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index.

With reporting by Reuters and RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) says it has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to resolve claims brought by the Azerbaijani government that the company says have “hampered its news reporting inside the country for almost three years.”

In a September 13 statement, RFE/RL said it filed its appeal to the Strasbourg-based court in June.

The appeal cited articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which Azerbaijan is a signatory, providing for the right to a fair trial within a reasonable amount of time and the right to an effective remedy.

RFE/RL’s Baku bureau was raided and shut down by state agents in December 2014 on charges including two tax-related claims that the company says are “baseless.”

“We have been unable to make any progress on clearing these charges through the Azerbaijani judicial system,” RFE/RL President Thomas Kent said in the statement. “The charges are baseless, and as Azerbaijan is under the jurisdiction of the ECHR, we’ve decided to take our case there.”

RFE/RL said that what authorities described as a parallel, criminal investigation has “dragged on despite a requirement under Azerbaijani law that it be completed by the end of 2016.”

“We can only conclude that this so-called investigation is an exercise in obfuscation,” Kent said. “It has produced no evidence of wrongdoing, but it has kept our Baku bureau in legal limbo and created a threatening atmosphere for our journalists.”