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Azerbaijan releases blogger in key rights case: lawyer
AFP - Friday, November 19
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Azerbaijan releases blogger in key rights case: lawyer
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BAKU (AFP) - – A court in Azerbaijan has freed an opposition blogger whose jailing sparked an international outcry and ruled he can serve the remainder of his sentence as a suspended term, his lawyer said Thursday.
Adnan Hajizade, 27, was set free by the Baku Appeal Court on Thursday and the court was expected to consider a similar appeal for the release of fellow blogger Emin Milli within a few days, their lawyer Isakhan Ashurov told AFP.
Shortly after his release, Hajizade insisted his conviction had not been justified and called for Milli, 31, to be freed as well.
"I am not a criminal and I demand a full acquittal. Emin Milli should be released as well as he is no hooligan," Hajizade told the Azerbaijani service of US-funded Radio Liberty in a brief interview.
The two were convicted on hooliganism charges in November 2009, with Hajizade sentenced to two years in prison and Milli to two-and-a-half years.
The charges related to a scuffle in a restaurant but the bloggers insisted they were a politically-motivated attempt to silence their criticism of Azerbaijan's authorities.
They were arrested shortly after posting a popular Internet video of a donkey giving a press conference, lampooning ex-Soviet Azerbaijan's docile press and statements by government officials.
Their jailing drew widespread criticism and accusations that Azerbaijani authorities were trying to stifle free speech. Foreign leaders, including US President Barack Obama, had called for the bloggers to be freed.
Arif Aliyev, the chairman of the Yeni Nesil journalists' association, said Hajizade's release appeared aimed at reducing recent international criticism of Azerbaijan's rights record, in particular after parliamentary elections earlier this month that were criticised by foreign observers and some Western governments.
"There is no doubt that Adnan Hajizade's release is a positive step," he said. "This was an issue that had captured a lot of attention both in the country and internationally.... The authorities have taken this step in order to ease the international reaction to the election."
Human rights groups and some analysts said the jailing of the two bloggers was intended as a warning to anti-government activists using the Internet.
Hajizade, co-founder of the OL (To Be) youth movement, and Milli, co-founder of online television channel AN Network, are both Western-educated children of opposition activists at the centre of a growing circle of young people using the Internet to criticise Azerbaijan's authorities.
Using sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the activists posted news updates, critical essays and satirical videos, offering an alternative to Azerbaijan's mainstream television and newspapers, which critics allege are under strict government control.
European Union representatives, the media freedom group Reporters Without Borders and the UN Human Rights Committee all raised concerns about the arrests of the bloggers.
Dozens of journalists in Azerbaijan have been jailed in recent years under laws that make libel a criminal offence, rather than a civil matter, as in many Western countries.
The country has also come under fire for adopting restrictive media laws and for banning foreign broadcasts, effectively ending local-language broadcasts by the BBC, Voice of America and Radio Liberty.
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