BAKU -- A court in Baku has extended the pretrial detention of two independent journalists arrested last year on smuggling charges they and their supporters vehemently reject.
The Xatai district court ruled on March 7 that Elnara Qasimova and Hafiz Babali must stay in pretrial detention until at least June 13. The journalists' lawyers called the court's ruling baseless and vowed to appeal it.
Qasimova, a correspondent for the Abzas Media investigative website, was arrested in January. Babali, the chief of the economic news department at the Turan news agency, was arrested in December.
Investigators say the arrests were part of a probe against four other journalists and editors of Abzas Media -- Ulvi Hasanli, Sevinc Vaqifqizi, Mahammad Kekalov, and Nargiz Absalamova -- who were arrested in November last year after police claimed they found 40,000 euros ($43,500) in cash in the offices of the media outlet.
The journalists were charged with illegally smuggling foreign currency. They insist the case against them is trumped-up and in retaliation for their reports about official corruption.
On March 6, Baku police detained about a dozen journalists from the Toplum TV online television channel after searching its offices in the Azerbaijani capital. The majority of the journalists were released hours later. However, three journalists -- Musfiq Cabbar, Elmir Abbasov, and Farid Ismayilov -- were not released and charged with smuggling.
Also on March 6, police detained a founding member of the Third Republican Platform opposition group -- Akif Qurbanov.
SEE ALSO: Azerbaijani TV Station's Journalists Detained; U.S. 'Deeply Troubled'Toplum TV's editor in chief is Khadija Ismayilova, a former bureau chief in Baku for RFE/RL's Radio Azadliq and one of the country's most renowned investigative journalists.
Ismayilova told journalists that her media outlet "has not been involved in any illegal activities," stressing that the authorities most likely "want to fully liquidate independent media in the country to leave no platform for critical opinions."
Western governments and international human rights groups have urged Azerbaijani authorities to drop all charges against the journalists and release them.
On March 7, British Ambassador to Azerbaijan Fergus Auld expressed concerns about the March 6 arrests.
"Britain is deeply troubled by the arrest of journalists from 'Toplum TV' and the representative of the '3rd Republic' political movement. We call on Azerbaijan to protect freedom of expression and the fundamental human rights, including those of all recently arrested media representatives," Auld said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.
Critics of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's government say authorities in the oil-rich Caspian Sea state frequently seek to silence dissent by jailing opposition activists, journalists, and civil-society advocates on trumped-up charges.
Aliyev has ruled Azerbaijan with an iron fist since 2003, taking over from his father, Heydar Aliyev, who served as president for a decade.