International News

WASHINGTON, June 3, (APP/AFP) – The US State Department has demanded that Azerbaijan release an investigative journalist who was reportedly abducted this week in Georgia and then handed over to Azerbaijan, where he was placed in detention.
“The United States is disturbed by the reported abduction in Tbilisi,
Georgia, and subsequent arrest in Azerbaijan of Azerbaijani journalist Afgan
Mukhtarli on May 30,” said a statement from State Department spokeswoman
Heather Nauert.
The statement also expressed concern over the May 25 arrest in Azerbaijan of Gozal Bayramli, deputy chair of the opposition Popular Front Party.
It urged Azerbaijan “to release all those incarcerated for exercising their fundamental freedoms.”
The State Department and international non-governmental organizations
regularly criticize Azerbaijan for infringing on human rights and press
freedom. Just as regularly, the administration of President Ilham Aliyev
rejects the complaints.
The State Department said it was “closely following” the investigation of 43-year-old Mukhtarli and said it should be timely and transparent.
The government in Tbilisi denied any link to the abduction.
Mukhtarli’s lawyer, Elchin Sadykhov, said his client had fled to Georgia amid fears for his safety while he was investigating possible corruption involving President Aliyev.
The lawyer said that unknown men dressed in plainclothes and speaking
Georgian had abducted and beaten Mukhtarli on May 30 before handing him over to authorities in Azerbaijan.
There a tribunal placed him in provisional detention for three months, charging him with crossing the border illegally while attempting to smuggle money — money that Sadykhov said was planted in his pockets.
“This is a deeply sinister development in a country known for its long crackdown on journalists and human rights defenders,” said a statement on the website of Amnesty International. “Afgan Mukhtarli must be immediately and unconditionally released and protected from torture and other ill treatment.”
The European Council’s human rights commissioner, Nils Muiznieks, demanded that the journalist be freed “without delay.”