Tag: prosecutor general

prosecutor’s general office warns online news platform

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On September 22, Aziz Orujov, the director and founder of Kanal 13, an online television platform, was questioned by the Prosecutor’s General office, according to reporting by Meydan TV.  

In an interview with Meydan TV, Orucov said, the Prosecutor’s Office claimed, Kanal 13 published video items damaging the reputation of the Azerbaijani Army, and casting a shadow on the strengthening work of the state’s defense capabilities.

Orujov said the allegations were not true. 

The Prosecutor’s Office issued a warning to the channel’s director, based on the Information, Informatisation, and Protection of Information and On National Security laws. The office also said the channel removed the videos in question.  

two website editors, and three social media users questioned over “disseminating forbidden information on the internet” [updated August 8]

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[UPDATE] By August 8, four more citizens were called in for questioning over their social media posts about the military operations in Azerbaijan reported Qaynarinfo.az. Rustam Ismayilbeyli, Farid Huseynov, Elmar Mammadov, Gulay Eyvazova were all invited to the Prosecutor’s Office where all four received a warning. Ismayilbeyli, who is a political activist, wrote on his Facebook, that he was questioned on August 4, specifically over a Facebook post in which he mentions a quote by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. “I was questioned because of the quote by Ataturk, in which he said, ‘so long as the nation’s freedom is not under threat, starting a war is a crime.’ The Prosecutor’s Office concluded that the quote was a threat to national security,” wrote Ismayilbeyli. In a separate case, journalist Sakha

On July 27, according to Turan News Agency reporting, editors of two news sites, Fikret Ibishbeyli (Faramazoglu) and Agil Alishov were questioned by the General Prosecutor’s office. Ibishbeyli is the founder of jamaz.info and Alishov manages the website miq.az. In addition, according to the agency’s reporting, three social media users were also questioned. One of them, a man named Tofig Shakhmuradov, known as a blogger covering military news was sentenced to 30 days in administrative detention for “posting of information prohibited from dissemination on the telecommunication network, as well as failure to prevent the posting of such information” on Facebook.

Ibishbeyli, was most recently fined in January of this year, on the same charges, “disseminating forbidden information on the internet.” The journalist was fined a total amount of AZN500 [USD295] following a court decision. At the time, the Prosecutor General alleged that an article published on the jamaz.info website caused confusion and fear. 

In May, AIW published a legal analysis on who regulates content on the Internet in Azerbaijan. Based on that analysis, AIW specifically looked at how the Prosecutor’s Office was involved in this process and on what grounds. Currently, two laws regulate what constitutes prohibited information on the internet and the liability for violating these requirements. These are the Law on Information, Informatization, and Protection of Information, which defines the requirements and responsibilities for individuals; and the Law on Media, which defines the (almost) similar and additional requirements and responsibilities for journalists and media.

In addition, the presidential decree dated February 22, 2022, instructed the Ministry of Justice to prepare and submit a draft law on measures for violating information and media legislation on the internet to the government within a month. The law is yet to be adopted and concerns over its text and procedural implementation give ground to worry for a new restrictive law to be adopted not to mention its implications to further stifle free speech online.

Until then, an uptick in recent months, of cases in which social media users have faced punitive measures for their online activism indicates that the Prosecutor General Office has taken on a temporary role of taking measures against activists, journalists and media within the scope of laws on information and media. The prosecutor’s office argues that the official warnings issued by the institution are a precautionary measure for violating existing laws. However as it has been pointed out by the local human rights lawyers and experts, while the prosecutor’s office may be relying on existing bills on Information, Informatization, and Protection of Information as well as the Media, their measures can also be defined within the scope of additional articles of the Criminal Code. Therefore, say experts, the legality of these acts is questionable.

It is still not clear what constitutes “prohibited information”

According to the Law on Information, and Media, while there are general parameters of what prohibited information is, the definitions are rather broad and as such open to interpretation. 

In the case of two editors who received a warning on July 27, the prosecutor’s office claims both websites, published articles that cast a shadow on the country’s Armed Forces. Which articles specifically, however, is not clear. In the case of the social media users, there is no information on what posts specifically were the cause for questioning and subsequent detention of one of the users. In AIW’s legal analysis published in May, we reviewed a number of reported examples where social media users and journalists were warned or received administrative detention over publishing content. In neither of them, there was sufficient evidence to claim violations of the law did indeed occur.

In a Facebook post, media law expert, Alasgar Ahmedoglu wrote if Shahmuradov was sentenced on the grounds of spreading information prohibited by law then the information law enforcement found in violation of the law must be clearly shared as well. “If the prosecutor’s office has found a legal basis for restricting an individual’s freedom of information, it must clearly indicate the date on which the person disseminated that information, what the prohibited information in that disseminated information, and by which specific law the dissemination of that information is prohibited […] A person’s constitutional right cannot be so grossly restricted by merely stating in general terms “prohibited by law,” wrote Ahmedoglu. The expert pointed out, that while applying provisions of existing laws as punitive measures, the General Prosecutor’s Office must also take into account Articles 47 (freedom of thought and speech), and 50 (freedom to lawfully seek, obtain, transmit and disseminate information) of the Constitution of Azerbaijan.   

 

Several social media users warned, one sentenced to 30 days of administrative detention

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A series of new warnings were issued by the Prosecutor General office to social media users in Azerbaijan. In a statement issued by the Prosecutor General’s office, it claims five Azerbaijani citizens received a warning over their social media posts that the prosecutor’s office described as “violating stability, rights, and freedoms and casting a shadow over state’s efforts to strengthen defense capabilities.”

In addition, a citizen named Namig Aliyev was found guilty of violating the state law on Information, Informatisation, and Protection of Information. According to the prosecutor’s office, Aliyev, editor of Yeniavaz.com news website failed to remove a Facebook post about the story published by Yeniavaz.com website that qualified as “information prohibited from sharing.”

But a series of developments including a statement by Yeniavaz.com website editor show that not only did the Prosecutor Office provide false information about Namig Aliyev’s affiliation with Yeniavaz.com website but that the story the prosecutor office wanted removed directly referred to the prosecutor office earlier involvement in committing violence against an opposition activist.

Timeline of events

On December 1, 2021, a group of activists staged a protest in the capital Baku in support of jailed opposition activist Saleh Rustamov. During the protest, scores of activists were detained, including opposition figure Tofig Yagublu, a former political prisoner himself. The violence he faced in the hands of the police was widely reported on social media platforms.

The head of the Media and Public Relations Department of the Interior Ministry’s press service, while having denied any allegations of torture, promised to investigate the case of Yagublu. 

On January 12, the Prosectur Office said it had finalized the invetigation. According to the results, Yagublu was not tortured and that the signs of violence documented and widely reported were inflicted by Yagublu himself. The investigation claimed Yagublu harmed himsefl and that no police officer was involved in violence against Yagublu. 

Yeniavaz.com published three separate articles on the results of the investigation, most recent one on January 18, 2022. 

On January 24, Yeniavaz.com website editor Baylar Majidov, published a Facebook post, with the following text: 

“The prosecutor arrested a man named Namig Aliyev, and [Azerbaijani] media presented him as the director of Yeniavaz.com. Offically, we would like to note that not only do we not have an employee named Namiq Aliyev but he is certainly not the direcotr of Yeniavaz.com.”

Majidov also wrote that their newsroom never received an official request from the General Prosecutor office to remove any information from the website or from the news website’s social media accounts.   

Also on January 24, in another statement issued by the Prosecutor General Office, it announced its decision to sentence social media user Namig Aliyev to 30 days of aministrative detention for sharing information prohibited by law. The statement also said, the office launched administrative proceedings against Azermedia LLC, a legal entity representing the operations of yeniavaz.com on the grounds that the website failed to remove the information prohibited by law. 

On January 25, yeniavaz.com published a story by one of its authors, Anar Garakhanchalli being questioned at the Prosecutor General Office on January 20, 2022. There Garakhanchalli described the conversation he had: 
I was invited to the General Prosecutor office on January 20. After talking to me first about the state, the importance of the prosecutor office for the state and etc I asked them calmly what was the purpose of my invitiation. They told me, it was an article titled “Prosecutor office: ‘Tofig Yagublu’s state was caused as a result of him beating himself up'” that yeniavaz.com published on its website and shared on its Facebook page. So I asked, if there was something wrong about the story, whether it was a lie. They said, the story was correct, but we are concerned about the comments that were written under the post. I said, if the story was ture, if you have no objections then why am I here? I also added that Facebook has billions of users, how can we be held accountable for something written by others? The officer sitting across from me then said, we suspected that these responses would follow, after giving the story a headline like that. I told this this was ludicrous. You confirm yourself that the story is true, you do not object to any of the wording, and yet you are questioning the reporter’s intent?! 
After two hour long visit, Garakhanchalli was let go. 
No further statements were made by yeniavaz.com while the articles in question all remain available online at the time of writing of this post.
AIW previously documented a number of cases where social media users and journalists received warnings, or fines over their onlline posts. 

journalist facing jail time

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Anar Mammadov is editor of criminal.az – website that was blocked by the authorities in Azerbaijan in 2018. Mammadov was sentenced to 5.5 years of imprisonment with a two-year probation period on charges of anti-state appeals, abuse of power and official forgery in March 2019. The official cause of the criminal prosecution was the publication of news about the assassination attempt on the former head of the city of Ganja Elmar Veliyev.

On January 6, Mammadov was pressed with a set of new allegations facing arrest. The accusation comes from a woman, named Malahat Gurbanova. Mammadov wrote about Gurbanova’s legal battle with former Minister of Social Services earlier on. Gurbanova now, alleges Mammadov’s language used to describe Gurbanova in his coverage was slanderous and insulting. Mammadov refutes these claims in his defense adding, if anything, it is he who feels insulted.

Criminal.az is an independent website covering predominantly crime-related stories. The website was blocked by the authorities in 2017, along with a number of other critical and independent news websites. It later began operating under the criminalaz.com domain, which was also blocked shortly after.

*Criminalaz.com, Fia.az, bastainfo.az and topxeber.az were blocked in Azerbaijan after the prosecutor’s office claimed these news websites misinformed their audiences and shared news of provocative nature that were untrue. [Turan News Agency]

**Since May 2017, over 20 websites have been blocked in Azerbaijan, among them: Azadliq Radio (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Azerbaijan Service) and its international service, Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, Azadliq Newspaper (independent of the Azadliq radio), Meydan TV, Turan TV and Azerbaijan Saadi (Azerbaijan Hour), OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Unit), abzas.net, obyektiv.tv, and others on the ground these outlets promoted violence, hatred, extremism, violated privacy or constituted slander.

***Websites blocked since then are blocked for slander and spreading misinformation. At some point, an editor of the blocked az24saat.org was asked to remove four articles that mentioned Ali Hasanov, now a former aide to President Ilham Aliyev. Monitortv.info, which was among the blocked websites, also received a note requesting the removal of articles mentioning Ali Hasanov on the grounds these stories contained slander and lies. [Open Democracy]

At the time of the verdict against the journalist Mammadov, several international journalism organizations, and the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media criticized the court’s decision.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called on the Azerbaijani authorities to drop charges against Mammadov and pointing to the unfounded prosecution.

“Informing the general public about important events is what journalists do, and the authorities should support this work, and not punish reporters,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ Program Coordinator for Europe and Central Asia.

In June 2019, the Baku Court of Appeal upheld the conviction of Anar Mammadov.

Timeline

15 May 2019 – Mammadov summoned to the prosecutor’s office. This time the journalist was questioned over a story about the state oil company – SOCAR.

Meydan TV, an independent online news website covering Azerbaijan was also targeted. Although the website of Meydan.tv was blocked already in 2017, following the publication of stories about SOCAR, the website was heavily DDoSed.

9 July 2018 – Mammadov, questioned by the police. The journalist’s home was searched and his personal devices, including his laptop and phone, were seized by the police.

Mammadov was questioned after publishing reports on an attempt on the life of the mayor of Ganja, Elmar Valiyev, on 3 July.

24 July 2018 – Mammadov was summoned to the prosecutor’s office. The journalist was questioned about the publication of reports on the assassination attempt and was warned not to spread “investigative secrets”.