aiw_admin – Azerbaijan Internet Watch

copyright complaints take down Instagram pages of exiled Azerbaijani media – eight outlets call it a coordinated attack

Posted on September 2, 2026 by aiw_admin

This entry draws on reporting by Meydan TV and a joint statement issued by eight Azerbaijani media outlets on August 28.

In the last week of August, Meta blocked access to the Instagram pages of Abzas Media and Toplum TV, two independent outlets now operating in exile, after a series of copyright-infringement complaints. Days earlier, Facebook and Instagram blocked the opposition newspaper Azadlıq’s pages and the Instagram page of Azərbaycan Saatı on the same grounds. Meydan TV and HamamTimes have faced similar complaints at various points over the past year.

On August 28, eight outlets – Abzas Media, Meydan TV, Toplum TV, Azadlıq, HamamTimes, Azərbaycan Saatı, Qəzetçi and Mikroskop Media – issued a joint statement describing the complaints as part of a wider campaign to silence independent journalism, rather than a series of unrelated technical disputes.

What happened

Abzas Media’s acting director Gunel Safarova told Meydan TV that the outlet received four copyright complaints between August 22 and 25. The flagged posts were:

a video originally produced by the Azadlıq newspaper;
a video built on an interview first published by Musavat.com;
a video distributed by HamamTimes;
a short clip of the 2022 Göyçay flooding taken from social media.

In each case, Safarova said Abzas Media credited the original source. None of the complaints came from those sources. HamamTimes – which describes Abzas Media as a close partner – told Meydan TV it filed no complaint with Meta and condemned the takedown.

Toplum TV’s editor Parvana Gurbanli described a similar pattern: the outlet was reported over a video of the August 3 landslide in Baku’s Xətai district that buried several cars. The footage came from the official YouTube channel of the state-funded public broadcaster İctimai TV, with attribution. The complainant claimed it came from his personal profile.

The signature of a coordinated campaign

What distinguishes this episode from the routine misuse of takedown tools is the paper trail. According to Abzas Media, although the complaints were submitted under different names, several used the same email address registered to one individual, “Farid Guliyev.” The “original content” links supplied by the complainants did not point to their own accounts but to the actual publishers – Azadlıq, Musavat.com and HamamTimes – none of which had complained. The joint statement adds that other complaints filed under different names repeated the same details, wording and structure.

The outlets have not been able to establish independently who organized the complaints. But the reuse of a single email address across multiple identities, complaints against unrelated content published at different times, and the near-simultaneous targeting of at least six outlets point to a single origin rather than a series of coincidences. Meta’s automated systems accepted the complaints, removed the posts, and – once enough strikes accumulated – deactivated entire accounts. The outlets say Meta requested no evidence of ownership at any stage.

Why this matters more for exiled media

For outlets that can no longer operate inside Azerbaijan, Meta’s platforms are not a supplementary distribution channel; they are the primary way to reach an audience at home. Their websites have been blocked in the country for years – Meydan TV, Azadlıq, Azərbaycan Saatı and Turan TV since 2017, Abzas Media and Toplum TV since the crackdown that began in November 2023. Their Baku-based staff are in prison: Abzas Media’s team received seven- to nine-year sentences in June 2025, upheld on appeal in April; the Toplum TV defendants received 11 to 15 years on July 27; and the Meydan TV case has ensnared eleven journalists. More than 25 journalists are currently behind bars.

As Safarova told Meydan TV, with no staff left in the country and the websites blocked, the only remaining lever against these outlets is to get their social media accounts shut down.

Not a new tactic – a refined one

Azerbaijan Internet Watch has documented the abuse of platform takedown mechanisms against critics for years. The pattern that emerged in August is a more industrialized version of what we have seen before:

2020 – opposition Musavat party accounts in January; arqument.az’s Facebook page in June (11,000 likes, 12,000 followers and months of posts deleted); bastainfo.com in September (5,000 followers and content back to 2017 wiped). In June 2020, someone holding activist Rustam Ismayilbeyli’s national ID card requested a password reset on his Facebook account – a reminder that the state, not the user, holds the documents platforms use to verify identity.
March 2021 – Sancaq TV. Unable to hack Mehman Huseynov’s Facebook page, perpetrators created several fake “Sancaq TV” pages and used them to report the genuine page as the impostor. His Instagram account had already been taken via spoofed Instagram SMS messages.
April 2022 – Humans of Azerbaijan. After Huseynov recovered the hijacked “Humans of Azerbaijan” page, the perpetrators submitted his own ID to Facebook to prove they were the “real” owner, then filed identical complaints against every page he administered. Facebook responded by blocking all of Huseynov’s accounts, including his personal profile.
2021–2022 – Toplum TV, three times over. Its Facebook page was hijacked in September 2021 (16,000 followers lost), November 2021 (via SMS interception of a founder’s 2FA code – a technique that requires a mobile operator’s cooperation), and September 2022 (26,000 followers and two weeks of content deleted). In the same period, HamamTimes’ website was hacked and its archive wiped.
2022 – Azad Söz. Videos investigating the state oil company and a relative of its former president were removed from YouTube on the basis of NetzDG complaints and restored only after third-party intervention; the outlet then reported trolls combing its archive for old images to mass-report as community-standards violations, and its TikTok account was shut down in May. During the September 2022 border clashes, mass fake reporting got the Facebook profiles of activist Giyas Ibrahim (six days) and Azad Söz founder Tural Sadiqli suspended.
March 2023 – RLC. The Facebook page of the online outlet RLC was hijacked and a year’s content deleted. As AIW noted then, Facebook has never – in any Azerbaijani case we know of – helped recover deleted content.
September 2023 – Hürriyyət. A Baku court ordered the YouTube channel of the online outlet blocked at the Prosecutor General’s request, after a guest criticized the Defense Ministry – the overt, legal route to the same end.
March 2024 – Toplum TV. Hours after police raided the outlet’s Baku office and detained its staff, its social media accounts were compromised and all 3,600 videos on its YouTube channel deleted.
2025 As AIW documented in December, HamamTimes’ Instagram account was suspended for 16 days in April 2025 over an unsubstantiated “breach of intellectual property rights” after it covered a data breach at Kapital Bank; Azad Söz lost YouTube videos to bogus court orders; Mukhtarli’s TikTok was closed by the platform, then blocked inside the country; and on December 16 Meydan TV’s Instagram page, with close to a million followers, was suspended over a copyright complaint filed by a sitting member of parliament, Ülvi Quliyev. Meta rejected the counter-notice.

The 2019- 2020 attacks targeted one activist at a time with amateurish, traceable complainants, largely hacks and hijacks. From there onwards, the emphasis shifted to weaponizing the platforms’ own trust-and-safety tools: impersonation reports, identity-verification disputes, community-standards mass reporting, NetzDG complaints, and finally, copyright strikes, which carry the heaviest automatic penalties and the weakest verification. Read together, what is happening in Azerbaijan is a sign of a deliberate campaign targeting exiled media at once.

The bigger picture

The account takedowns land in the middle of a legislative and institutional overhaul that has made the state’s own censorship tools far more powerful:

In June 2026, authorities set up the National Cybersecurity Agency, which concentrates website blocking, traffic filtering, and personal data oversight in one presidentially supervised body. OC Media’s website was blocked the same month.
In July 2026, parliament expanded extrajudicial blocking to cover “defamation,” “insult,” and undefined “false information.”
Also, as of July 2026, new rules require Meta, TikTok, and other platforms to register locally, open offices in Baku, and respond to government data requests, with fines and blocking as penalties for non-compliance.

Domestically, the state no longer needs a court to block a website. What it cannot do unilaterally is remove content hosted on foreign platforms – and that is precisely the gap that mass copyright complaints fill. The complaints outsource censorship to Meta’s automated enforcement, bypassing the platform’s human review and the need for any legal process.

What the outlets are asking for

The joint statement asks Meta and other platforms to treat the complaints as a possible coordinated attack rather than a stack of individual notices: to investigate the source of the complaints, the reuse of identities and email addresses, whether complainants actually own the material they claim, and whether the reporting mechanism is being deliberately abused. It asks Meta to urgently review and restore the deactivated accounts and build safeguards so automated moderation cannot be turned into a censorship tool through coordinated reporting. It also urges platforms to consider reports from international press-freedom and human rights organizations on Azerbaijan when weighing complaints that originate there.

From the Azerbaijani government, the outlets demand an end to the campaign against independent media – the arrests, prosecutions, website blocks and now the digital attacks – and the release of imprisoned journalists.

Popular Front activist jailed over social media posts

Posted on July 31, 2026August 13, 2026 by aiw_admin

On July 31, Elmar Piriyev, an activist with the Tovuz district branch of the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party (AXCP), was placed under administrative detention for ten days. According to information the party provided to Meydan TV, the detention followed critical posts he made on social media.

Piriyev had been out of contact since July 27. The party’s organizational department head, Sagif Gurbanov, said Piriyev had reported being summoned to the Tovuz district police station that afternoon; his detention only became known afterward. He has reportedly been subjected to administrative detention in Tovuz previously for his political activity.

Why this matters for online speech

The case is a routine but instructive example of how criticism published online is punished offline. Administrative detention, imposed in a same-day hearing, without the evidentiary standards or appeal timelines of criminal proceedings, has become the low-cost instrument of choice against activists whose visibility is primarily digital. The formal charge in such cases is typically disobedience to police rather than anything speech-related, which keeps the online origin of the case out of the court record entirely. Piriyev is not an isolated instance: activist Anar Huseynov received 30 days in June, and Kanan Ismayil 30 days on July 22.

The multi-day period during which family and colleagues could not locate Piriyev is itself a recurring feature, and one that directly suppresses the online response an arrest would otherwise generate.

More than 20 AXCP members and activists are currently jailed, including party chairman Ali Karimli. The Union for the Freedom of Political Prisoners of Azerbaijan lists 328 political prisoners in its most recent count. Azerbaijani authorities reject the characterization, maintaining that those detained face liability for specific criminal acts rather than their political views.

Azerbaijan expands extrajudicial website blocking authority – parliament amends information law

Posted on July 14, 2026 by aiw_admin

On 10 July 2026, Azerbaijan’s parliament adopted amendments to the Law on Information, Informatization and Information Protection, significantly broadening the executive’s power to block internet resources without prior judicial authorization.

What changed

Before these amendments, extrajudicial (warrantless) blocking was restricted to genuine emergencies – defined as situations in which state or public interests were under threat or lives were in immediate danger. The amended law now permits extrajudicial blocking of websites that allegedly contain: defamation or insult of individuals; invasion of private or family life; promotion of illegal drugs; pornographic material; promotion of gambling; content encouraging suicide; films or games lacking age-rating disclosure; or “false information that could endanger public safety” – a deliberately vague category with no statutory definition. The blocking authority remains the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport.

How we got here

The law was originally adopted in 1998, when internet blocking required a court order. A 2017 amendment introduced Article 13-3, permitting temporary extrajudicial blocking in urgent cases with mandatory court notification within five days. Shortly after 2017, Meydan TV (meydan.tv), Azadlıq Radio (azadliq.org), Azadlıq newspaper (azadliq.info), Turan TV, and Azərbaycan Saatı were blocked under this provision. Further expansions in 2020–21 added “false information of public significance” as a blocking ground during the pandemic and the Second Karabakh War. The July 2026 amendments represent the broadest expansion to date, removing the “emergency” limitation entirely for the newly added categories.

Expert assessment

Lawyer Ruslan Əliyev identified the core risk: under the previous framework, even formal judicial proceedings provided some documentary record and a basis for appeal. Under the new framework, a single official can block content in seconds. “First, the blocking happens, then you become the foot soldier chasing to get it unblocked.” He noted that the new grounds – defamation, insult, false information – lack precise legal definitions, making it impossible to distinguish between legitimate content removal and the suppression of critical journalism.

Parallel social media regulation

The same legislative period also produced new rules requiring social media platforms serving Azerbaijani users to verify user ages (minimum 16), establish local registration or representation in Azerbaijan, and respond to government data requests. These measures follow a pattern across the South Caucasus and Central Asia of requiring platform localization as a precondition for lawful operation, enabling domestic legal pressure on otherwise internationally domiciled companies.

Relevance for internet freedom monitoring

The July 2026 amendments consolidate Azerbaijan’s extrajudicial blocking architecture and make it applicable to a wider set of content categories without any statutory definition of what qualifies. The vagueness of “false information endangering public safety” and “insult” creates categorical overlap with content that Azerbaijan’s independent press regularly produces – investigative reporting into officials, criticism of government policy, and human rights documentation. Combined with the existing blocking of major independent outlets since 2017, and the practice of blocking government websites from abroad (documented by Meydan TV in May 2026), the amendments represent a significant further restriction on both domestic and diaspora access to independent information.

Meta, TikTok, and other social media platforms to face mandatory registration and local presence requirements in Azerbaijan [Updated Aug 13]

Posted on July 6, 2026August 13, 2026 by aiw_admin

[Update August 2026] Parliament passed the amendments as Law No. 431-VIIQD on June 30, 2026, and on August 5, 2026, President Ilham Aliyev signed an implementing decree in Baku assigning enforcement powers, setting institutional deadlines, and bringing the accompanying sanctions in the Code of Administrative Offenses into effect.

The package, first tabled in early June, requires global social media platforms, for the first time, to register in the country or establish a local representative office, verify users’ ages, and enforce a higher minimum age.

Under the adopted law:

Persons under 16 are barred from opening social media accounts.
Platforms must verify users’ ages.
Platforms must establish a representative office or register in Azerbaijan.
Platforms must respond to requests from state bodies within five working days.
Non-compliant platforms face fines, an advertising ban, and phased throttling of their internet traffic.

The advertising ban and traffic-throttling mechanisms are notable additions relative to what was publicly described during the drafting stage, when discussion centered on fines and outright blocking.

Oversight of the social media platforms subject to age restrictions falls primarily to the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport.

On specific questions the ministry acts jointly with, or in the capacity of, security bodies:

Powers under Article 13-4.4 of the Law on Information are exercised jointly by the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport and the State Security Service (DTX).
Powers under Articles 13-4.10 and 13-4.14, and under Article 388-4.3.5 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, are exercised by the ministry acting as the National Cybersecurity Agency — the agency is not a separate legal entity here but a capacity in which the ministry acts.
Awareness and education measures under Article 13-4.14 also involve the Ministry of Science and Education and the State Committee for Family, Women and Children Affairs.
The Media and Broadcasting Council is “recommended” to conduct regular public awareness activities on the compliant use of age-restricted platforms once the law enters into force.

The decree also amends the list of officials empowered to draw up administrative-offense protocols, adding Article 388-4 cases and assigning those under Articles 388-4.3.4 and 388-4.3.5 to officials acting on behalf of the ministry in its capacity as the National Cybersecurity Agency.

The direct involvement of the State Security Service in administering a regime publicly justified on child-protection grounds is the single most significant institutional detail in the decree, worth noting and keeping in mind, given the country’s overall information-controls environment.

The sanctions adopted in the Code of Administrative Offenses are considerably lower than the 100,000–300,000 AZN range reported while the package was still in draft:

Violation	Officials	Legal entities
Failure to submit information to the authorized body, missing deadlines, or submitting false information	6,000–7,000 AZN	15,000–20,000 AZN
Platform providers failing to answer official requests within five working days, or distorting information	7,000–8,000 AZN	25,000–30,000 AZN
Violation of the rules on safe use of platforms	8,000–9,000 AZN	35,000–40,000 AZN
Repeat violation within one year	9,000–10,000 AZN	45,000–50,000 AZN

For companies the size of Meta, Google, or TikTok, these sums are immaterial. The operative leverage in the regime is not the fine but the escalation ladder behind it: advertising bans, phased traffic reduction, and blocking.

Alongside the platform provisions, the latest amendments to the Law on Information expand the list of circumstances in which internet resources can be temporarily blocked without a court decision. The grounds now include insult and defamation, information that violates privacy, promotion of narcotics, disinformation that poses a threat to public safety, and other categories of content.

This is the change with the broadest implications for online speech generally, and it travels in the same legislative vehicle as the child-safety provisions. Insult and defamation in particular have long been the charges of choice against critical online voices in Azerbaijan; making them a basis for administrative blocking without judicial review removes what limited procedural check previously existed.

The law prohibits the creation of social media accounts for children under 16, above the minimum age of 13 that most platforms currently apply. Existing accounts will be reviewed after the law takes effect, and accounts for which the holders’ ages cannot be verified will be deleted. Users aged 16–18 are subject to parental consent and oversight, special safety measures, content and advertising restrictions, and geolocation limits.

Parts of this entry are based on reporting published by Qəzetçi. Below is a translated, edited, and expanded version of the original.

Azerbaijan’s parliament (Milli Majlis) is debating a package of amendments to the Law on Information, Informatization and Protection of Information and the Law on the Protection of Children from Harmful Information that would, for the first time, formally require global social media platforms to register in the country, open local representative offices, and enforce a higher minimum age for users.

Under the draft, platforms that fail to comply face financial sanctions of 100,000 to 300,000 AZN, as well as the possibility of being blocked in the country. According to Farid Pardashunas, a board member of the Press Council, platforms will be given 12 months to comply once the law enters into force, and companies such as Meta, Google, and TikTok would be expected to open offices in Baku and set up Azerbaijani-language support services — a model he compared to neighboring Turkey.

Age restrictions raised from 13 to 16

The amendments, under discussion since early June, would prohibit the creation of social media accounts for children under 16, above the minimum age of 13 that most platforms currently apply. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, Snapchat, and other networks would reportedly fall within the law’s scope. Existing accounts would be reviewed after the law takes effect, and accounts whose holders’ ages cannot be verified would be deleted. Users aged 16–18 would be subject to parental consent and oversight, special safety measures, content and advertising restrictions, and geolocation limits.

Age verification, according to Havva Huseynli, head of the cooperation and communication sector at the Electronic Security Service, would rely on cross-checking bank card data (via temporary blocking of funds), email, and mobile phone numbers. Huseynli said personal data would be used solely for age verification and would be deleted immediately if a match is not confirmed. The proposed changes were also discussed at a June 10 meeting between the Presidential Administration and NGO representatives.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Science and Education has already moved ahead with its own restrictions. Deputy Minister Firudin Gurbanov said on June 8 that access to TikTok has been blocked in schools, that internet filtering is applied to schoolchildren’s access more broadly, and that videos on more than 200 “dangerous topics” have been restricted.

Tax registration as a parallel track

Separately, starting September 2026, foreign digital service providers operating in Azerbaijan’s e-commerce market with an annual turnover exceeding 10,000 USD will be required to register electronically with the tax authorities. The State Tax Service announced on May 10 that ten foreign digital service providers — including Apple, Adobe, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Epic Games, and Chess.com — have already registered. Notably, Meta’s platforms (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), which provide e-commerce services in Azerbaijan, are absent from the published list.

Experts warn of vague criteria, privacy risks, and potential for abuse

Internet technology expert Osman Gunduz noted that Azerbaijan has 17-year-olds building AI businesses, coding, launching startups, and competing in international olympiads and hackathons — often with digital skills exceeding those of their parents. Gunduz also warned that the proposed verification methods (mobile number, email, bank card) can be circumvented — a child can simply use a parent’s phone or card — while leaving verification to the platforms themselves creates the risk of transferring identity data of millions of users to foreign companies.

Lawyer Yalchin Imanov told Qəzetçi that protecting minors online is a normal legislative practice, pointing to Australia’s law, in force since December of last year, as the first of its kind. But he stressed that such changes must go through public consultation first — something absent in Azerbaijan, where restrictions on information sources and social networks surface either only during parliamentary debates or after adoption. “That is the dangerous side of the matter,” he said. Imanov also noted the ambiguity of what the “200+ dangerous topics” restricted in schools actually cover, at a time when access to pornographic and other content remains freely available in the country. Given the authorities’ track record of intolerance toward freedom of expression and alternative sources of information, he said, the possibility that minors’ access to such sources will be restricted cannot be ruled out.

According to available figures, Azerbaijan has 7.6 million social media users — 1.65 million on Facebook, 4.73 million on Instagram, and over 6 million on TikTok, with WhatsApp the most active messaging app. The state’s interest in platforms is not limited to regulation: as Qazqazinfo reported back in 2024, the State Oil Fund (SOFAZ) has invested 179 million USD in Meta.

Background: previous attempts to monitor and control social media platforms

The current draft is the most concrete step yet in a longer trajectory of state efforts to bring social media under regulatory control, which Azerbaijan Internet Watch has documented over the years:

The 2017 amendments to the Law on Information. First adopted in 1998 as a technical regulation, the Law on Information, Informatization and Protection of Information was converted into a content-regulation instrument through restrictive amendments introduced on March 10, 2017 — the same law now being amended to cover platform registration. Together with the Code of Administrative Offenses (Articles 388 and 388-1), it has served as the primary legal basis for blocking websites and prosecuting online speech, see AIW’s coverage of the legal framework.
Prosecutor General’s Office as a de facto content regulator. AIW’s May 2022 legal analysis, “Who regulates content online in Azerbaijan”, documented the pattern of the Prosecutor’s Office issuing warnings and administrative charges against social media users, bloggers, and website editors for “disseminating prohibited information” — a practice that intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, when one MP even proposed a special unit to monitor social media platforms and hold users spreading “rumors” accountable.
Press Council proposals and the local-representation agenda. As early as 2020–2022, the Press Council proposed establishing a commission with the Prosecutor’s Office to regulate the media and floated regulating social media platforms. Media law expert Khalid Aghaliyev assessed at the time that these proposals were linked to the state’s intention to have platforms open representative offices in Azerbaijan and then use those offices to consolidate control over the platforms — precisely the mechanism now written into the draft amendments.
The 2022 Media Law. Adopted by parliament in December 2021 and signed in February 2022 despite widespread domestic and international criticism, the Law on Media extended restrictive registration and licensing requirements to online media and journalists. AIW’s legal opinion “New Media Law: implications for online media/journalism in Azerbaijan” detailed its adverse implications, and the mandatory media registry it created has since been used to deny registration to independent outlets.
The March 2026 presidential decree. The current amendments follow directly from a decree signed by President Ilham Aliyev on March 1, 2026, focused on children’s online safety, which introduced age restrictions on registering for social platforms and instructed the Cabinet of Ministers to draft implementing legislation within three months — a timeline consistent with the amendments now before parliament.
Expanding regulatory ambitions. The move also comes amid a broader push to regulate the digital sphere, including the government’s recent initiative to regulate AI-generated content and the creation of a new Digital Development Council in February 2026.

Viewed against this background, the framing of the current amendments around child safety mirrors earlier legislative moves in which protective language accompanied provisions that expanded the state’s leverage over online platforms and speech. The combination of mandatory local representation, steep fines, and blocking powers replicates the model adopted in Turkey and Russia — a model that in both countries has been used to pressure platforms into removing content and handing over user data.

OC Media blocked in Azerbaijan as new National Cybersecurity Agency takes over internet controls

Posted on June 30, 2026July 7, 2026 by aiw_admin

This entry draws on reporting by OC Media and Qəzetçi.

Access to OC Media, an independent online news outlet covering the South Caucasus, has been blocked in Azerbaijan. The outlet reported that readers first alerted it in early June that the website could no longer be reached from inside the country, and that traffic from Azerbaijan dropped sharply around the same time. Attempts to load the site from multiple regions of the country have since failed unless a VPN is used. Despite this, the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport claimed that no restrictions had been imposed and that there was no problem accessing the site. Azerbaijan’s Presidential Administration did not respond to the outlet’s inquiries.

If confirmed through technical measurement, OC Media joins a long list of independent and opposition news websites blocked in Azerbaijan. The websites of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Azerbaijan service, Meydan TV, Azadliq, Azerbaycan Saati, Turan TV, and OCCRP were blocked between 2017 and 2019 following amendments to the Law on Information, Informatization and Protection of Information in 2017, which authorized extrajudicial blocking of online resources. More recently, the websites of Abzas Media and Toplum TV were blocked amid the sweeping crackdown on independent media that began in November 2023, in which around 30 journalists have been placed in pre-trial detention or convicted, most commonly on smuggling and tax-related charges. Meydan TV has said its mirror websites are also periodically blocked, and that its social media pages have been repeatedly attacked.

A new “single engine” for online control

The timing of the block is significant. On June 2, 2026, the presidential website published two decrees that attracted little attention amid the routine flow of official announcements. The first abolished the Electronic Security Service (ESS), the roughly 30-person technical body created in 2013 under the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport. The second established its successor, the National Cybersecurity Agency (NCA), and approved its 50-clause charter.

The NCA is set up as a “public legal entity” – a legal form the government increasingly favors, as it places the body outside standard ministerial constraints while allowing it to generate its own revenue, with its authorized capital drawn from budget funds previously allocated to the ESS. On paper, the reorganization reads as administrative housekeeping aimed at “improving management.” In practice, as OC Media’s analysis of the charter shows, the decrees consolidate functions that were previously dispersed across ministries, courts, and the prosecutor’s office — website blocking, traffic filtering, personal data oversight, protection of broadcasting, even blocking of foreign gambling sites – inside a single well-resourced agency answerable to the minister and, ultimately, the president.

Two aspects deserve particular attention from an internet freedom perspective:

Choke-point control over traffic: The charter assigns the agency network-defense functions, such as filtering malicious traffic. While this is standard language for a cybersecurity body, the same infrastructure that absorbs DDoS attacks can throttle or degrade specific services. Azerbaijan has a documented record of exactly this: nationwide throttling during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020, and localized mobile internet disruptions during protests, including the 2019 protest outside the Baku City Administration building, where journalists and demonstrators reported mobile internet failures on site. The decree institutionalizes a permanent, presidentially supervised hand on that choke-point.

Surveillance and data oversight: The charter embeds surveillance-adjacent capabilities into the agency’s mandate and transfers oversight of personal data to it – a concerning combination in a country where Pegasus spyware was used against journalists, activists, and lawyers, and where no independent data protection authority exists.

Human rights lawyer Yalchin Imanov noted that the government has been restricting access to independent media websites since at least 2017, and that the new institutional setup arrives amid the harshest assault on the Azerbaijani press in more than a decade: Abzas Media shuttered and its journalists sentenced to seven to nine years in June 2025 (together with RFE/RL economist Farid Mehralizada); Toplum TV raided; Meydan TV’s Baku-based staff arrested; the BBC’s Baku bureau closed; the Turan news agency suspended; and the accreditations of Voice of America and Bloomberg correspondents revoked.

Why this matters

Until now, internet controls in Azerbaijan operated through a patchwork: the Ministry issued blocking orders (often without court decisions), the Prosecutor General’s Office pursued users and editors over online content, and the ESS handled technical security. The NCA gathers these levers into one institution at precisely the moment parliament is debating amendments that would require social media platforms to register locally, open offices in Baku, and enforce new age restrictions – with fines of 100,000–300,000 AZN and blocking as penalties for non-compliance. A single agency with blocking, filtering, and data oversight powers is the natural enforcement arm for that regime.

It is also worth noting an institutional irony: the ESS – whose officials were publicly explaining how age verification under the new social media rules would work as recently as June – has itself been dissolved, its functions absorbed into a body with a far broader censorship mandate and fewer checks.

Activist Ahmad Mammadli Sentenced to 6 Years

Posted on March 16, 2026March 17, 2026 by aiw_admin

On March 16, the Baku Serious Crimes Court held a hearing in the case of public activist and founder of Yoldash Media, Ahmad Mammadli.

The state prosecutor had requested a 9-year prison sentence.

Following deliberations, the court sentenced Mammadli to 6 years in prison.

Mammadli was detained on May 6, 2025, and formally remanded in custody on May 8. He is accused of inflicting serious knife injuries to an individual identified as Vugar Dunyamaliyev.

He was charged under:

Article 126.2.4 (intentional infliction of serious bodily harm)
Article 221.3 (hooliganism involving the use of a weapon)

Mammadli denies the charges, stating that his arrest is linked to his journalistic activities.

Azerbaijan Moves to Regulate AI-Generated Content

Posted on March 14, 2026March 23, 2026 by aiw_admin

Azerbaijan’s parliament is debating two draft laws that would establish the country’s first legal framework for AI-generated content. One bill would criminalise the creation of AI-generated sexually explicit content featuring real individuals without their consent, carrying a prison sentence of up to seven years. A second bill would require all AI-generated content to be clearly labelled as such, with fines of ₼80–₼150 (roughly $50–$90) for unlabelled material.

Parliamentary committees reviewed both bills in March. Human rights lawyer Yalchin Imanov welcomed the initiative as a legal first for Azerbaijan, but cautioned that its practical application remains unclear, noting that the country has a history of applying laws selectively to protect figures in power. ICT expert Osman Gunduz acknowledged the global urgency of regulating deepfakes and AI-generated sexual abuse material, but raised implementation concerns — particularly around how authenticity will be verified, what level of disclosure will be required, and whether vague enforcement mechanisms might create new legal risks for journalists and news organisations. He warned that without clear enforcement frameworks, bureaucratic obstacles could undermine the laws’ effectiveness and stifle a media and creative sector that will increasingly rely on AI tools to remain competitive.

Opposition Figure Given 25 Days Administrative Detention

Posted on March 10, 2026March 17, 2026 by aiw_admin

Jeyhun Novruzov, head of the Sabail district branch of the Popular Front Party (AXCP), has been sentenced to 25 days of administrative detention.

According to the party, he was found guilty under:

Article 510 (petty hooliganism)
Article 535.1 (failure to obey police orders)

The AXCP states that Novruzov had criticized traffic police on Facebook four days prior, accusing them of unlawfully fining pedestrians. Novruzov was previously sentenced to 10 days in detention in December 2024 under similar charges, which he denied.

Novruzov is not the first activist to receive penalties for online criticism. Recent months have seen continued cases in Azerbaijan where individuals—particularly opposition activists—have been detained after posting criticism of authorities on Facebook. According to recent reporting by independent Meydan TV, numerous individuals who liked and commented on social media posts critical of the authorities have also faced penalties and charges.

Among them is Movsum Mammadov, who was sentenced to 30 days in prison after posting criticism of local authorities on social media; civic activist Konul Ahmadova, who was sentenced to 10 days in administrative detention; and Mushfig Abbasov, who was sentenced to 15 days in administrative detention.

Analysis of anonymized court decisions published on Azerbaijan’s electronic court portal shows that social media activity—particularly Facebook posts—is frequently referenced in administrative cases. Courts typically describe such activity using generalized phrases such as “sharing content on social networks” or “publishing information online,” while avoiding full quotation of the posts themselves. The content is legally framed as violating public order, often characterized as insulting, immoral, or disruptive. Evidence commonly includes screenshots and data extracted from mobile devices. Rather than prosecuting speech directly, courts tend to apply public-order provisions such as petty hooliganism, effectively translating online expression into administrative offenses.

Blogger Manaf Jalilzade Sentenced to 8 Years in Absentia

Posted on March 6, 2026 by aiw_admin

The story was originally published on Meydan TV. This is a translated and edited version.

The Baku Court for Serious Crimes has sentenced Azerbaijani blogger Manaf Jalilzade — who lives abroad — to 8 years in prison. The verdict was delivered in absentia.

Jalilzade, currently residing in Switzerland, was charged with “calls against the state” under two articles of the Criminal Code: incitement to mass disorder and calls against the constitutional order. Prosecutors alleged he shared footage from a 2019 protest near the UN building in Geneva on YouTube, and between 2023 and 2025, published videos inciting violence against the government.

Switzerland’s Federal Ministry of Justice had previously rejected Azerbaijan’s extradition request, citing risks of torture and denial of a fair trial if he were returned. Jalilzade denies all charges, calling them baseless.

Broader Context

His case is part of a wider pattern. On December 26, 2025, a Baku court sentenced another group of diaspora bloggers in absentia: Gurban Mammadov and Tural Sadiqli each received 14 years, while five others received 9-year sentences. Most of the defendants reject the charges as politically motivated.

In recent years, Azerbaijan has opened criminal cases against numerous bloggers and activists living abroad, with charges typically including incitement to mass unrest, calls to armed uprising, terrorism, and fraud.

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