The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders on Tuesday called upon Azerbaijan’s law enforcement bodies to find out and punish the perpetrators of the last Saturday’s assault on the chief editor of an opposition daily. (21 July 2004)

 

Ask for fair investigation

The international press rights organization urged for a thorough investigation of the assault on Aydin Guliyev –editor-in-chief of the newspaper Baki-Khabar (Baku-News) –who was abducted and beaten up by four unknown men in Baku on July 17. Reporters Without Borders called on Ramil Usubov, Azerbaijan’s Minister of Internal Affairs, to ensure that the assaulters are found and punished and to do everything possible to protect Guliyev.

Abduction of chief editor

The Baki-Khabar chief editor on Monday said four masked men abducted him and bundled him into a minibus. They then gagged him and pushed his head into a plastic bag, insulting and threatening him. They accused him of carrying out an anti-Islamic propaganda via Baki-Khabar and also of being disrespectful to Azerbaijan’s “statehood.” Guliev said his newspaper had never carried any articles against Islam and that he believed the accusations were intended to cover the real reasons for the attack, which could well have been ordered by the government. He said he had been receiving phone threats for around ten days prior to his abduction. The Baki-Knabar chief editor appealed to foreign embassies in Baku to provide him and his family with an asylum. He said Azerbaijan is not a safe place for his family to live in any more.

The newspaper’s record

Baki-Khabar is the newspaper of the opposition Azerbaijan Democrat Party, which is chaired by Rasul Guliyev, an ex-parliamentary speaker that now lives in exile in the United States. A former ally of the late President Heydar Aliyev, Guliyev resigned from the post in 1996 and founded the opposition party. He is accused of appropriating large amounts of state funds while working as the head of an oil refinery plant in Baku in early 1990s.