Police Detain Journos Protesting Smear Targeting Azeri RFE/RL Reporter

RFE/RL Azerbaijani Service journalist Khadija Ismayilova (file photo)

Police in Azerbaijan have detained more than a dozen journalists protesting the apparent renewal of a blackmail and intimidation campaign against RFE/RL investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova.

The reporters were released after being taken to a police station in the capital, Baku.

The journalists, most of them women, chanted slogans including "Khadija, we are with you!"

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Ismayilova's reports have implicated President Ilham Aliyev, who will run for a third term in October, and his family in improper financial activities worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ismayilova, who reports for the Azerbaijani Service of the U.S.-funded broadcaster, responded defiantly to the appearance on the Internet in early 2012 of an explicit video in which she was shown.

On August 1, RFE/RL called on Azerbaijani authorities to investigate the new video, which contains intimate and illegally obtained images of Ismayilova.