Watchdog

The editor in chief of a leading independent Azerbaijani news organization and a lawyer have been ordered to serve four months of pretrial detention in a case involving allegations of bribery that both deny.

A court in Baku on September 11 issued the decision in the case of Avaz Zeynalli, the chief editor of Xural TV (Parliament) and Elchin Sadigov, a well-known human rights lawyer.

The court action comes after Zeynalli was accused in pro-government media of accepting bribes from a top Azerbaijani businessman who is himself facing criminal charges, including embezzlement, to stop printing critical reports on that case. Sadigov, the businessman’s lawyer, was alleged to have acted as the intermediary.

Both Sadigov and Zeynalli deny the charges and their lawyer said he will file an appeal.

The businessman, Rasim Mammadov, is the head of the Baku Steel Company. In February 2021, Mammadov was detained on charges, including embezzlement of some 55 million manat (more than $32 million).

Mammadov, who is represented by Sadigov, denies the charges.

It's not the first time Zeynalli has been accused of bribery-related charges.

In 2011, he was detained on allegations of extorting and accepting a bribe from former parliament deputy Gulyar Ahmadova.

Zeynalli pleaded not guilty at his trial in 2013, saying the case against him was connected with his work as a journalist.

He was sentenced to nine years in prison but was released a year later in 2014.

The United States has called on Russia to immediately release imprisoned opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, who was recently sent to solitary confinement.

"The United States is deeply concerned by the Russian government's escalating, arbitrary interference with Aleksei Navalny's rights," U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said on September 9.

Navalny said in a string of tweets on September 8 that prison authorities had said he had "communicated with accomplices" and accused him of engaging in criminal activity from prison, revoking his attorney-client privilege as a result.

Navalny, who is serving two sentences for violating parole and embezzlement at a prison 260 kilometers east of Moscow, said prison authorities had taken him out of his cell to inform him of the decision.

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Navalny added that when he asked what crimes he had committed from prison, he was told that "you are not allowed to know."

Navalny wrote on Instagram on September 7 that he had been ordered to spend 15 days in solitary confinement, the fourth time he has been placed in isolation at the prison in the town of Melekhovo.

Two days prior, the Kovrov City Court in the Vladimir region said it registered a lawsuit filed by Navalny against the prison's warden, Yury Korobov.

Navalny claims in the lawsuit that he was unnecessarily placed in punitive confinement for a partially unbuttoned prison suit.

Navalny's other incarcerations in a punitive cell were for failing to carry out a guard's command to put his hand behind his back in a timely manner, and for "wrongly identifying himself" to a guard.

In his statement, Price criticized Russia for revoking Navalny's attorney-client privilege, saying that "this interference, along with his repeated diversion to solitary confinement for minor alleged infractions, is further evidence of politically motivated harassment."

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According to Navalny, he was informed by prison authorities on September 8 that employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service would investigate all documents exchanged between him and his lawyer, a process that was expected to take three days.

Navalny was arrested in January of 2021 upon his return to Moscow from Germany, where he was treated for a poison attack in Siberia in 2020 with what European labs defined as a Soviet-style nerve agent.

Navalny, Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic, has blamed the Russian president for the poison attack, a charge that the Kremlin has denied.

The corruption crusader was then handed a 2.5-year prison sentence for violating the terms of an earlier parole during of his convalescence abroad. The original conviction is widely regarded as a trumped-up, politically motivated case.

In March, Navalny was sentenced in a separate case to nine years in prison on embezzlement and contempt charges that he and his supporters have repeatedly rejected as politically motivated.

With reporting by dpa, AFP, and Reuters