Abzas Media employee Mohammed Kekalov retracted his testimony in court during the preliminary investigation, stating that he gave it under pressure. He, like Nargiz Absalamova and Hafiz Babali, rejected the charges brought against him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Baku Court of Grave Crimes held another hearing on the Abzas Media case today, where the defendants were again heard, the “Caucasian Knot” correspondent reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mohammed Kekalov was the first to speak – he stated that he was only an interpreter for the director of the publication Ulvi Hasanli, and not a “deputy director”, as the investigation presents him. “I speak English well. I studied in this language at a university in the United States. Therefore, Ulvi Hasanli, who does not know English, asked me to translate some documents, to accompany him on foreign trips,” Kekalov explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He emphasized that he had not participated in any communication between the alleged donors of Abzas Media and the management of the publication. Kekalov also retracted his testimony during the preliminary investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I told the police that I was just a translator, that I knew nothing about any grants or donors, but they still insisted: “You know, you have to tell everything.” In the end, to get them to leave me alone, I gave the testimony they needed, making everything up,” Kekalov said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Kekalov, during the investigation he named international organizations that he learned about from the “Time with Mirshahinom” program on the pro-government Real TV channel<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kekalov also said that in addition to Gasanli, he knew three other defendants in Abzas Media – Sevinj Vagifgyzy, Elnara Gasimova and Nargiz Absalamova. “As an entrepreneur, I organized charity fashion shows of adaptive clothing for people with disabilities, and journalists came to them. Among them were Sevinj, Nargiz, and Elnara. I met them before I became a translator at Abzas Media,” Kekalov noted. He explained that he was not familiar with Babali and Mehralizade, but had only heard about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The accused, Nargiz Absalamova, said that she and her colleagues were arrested for “journalistic activities” and “exposing corruption” among high-ranking officials. “I was arrested for preparing a report on the protests of the residents of the village of Soyudlu. The police blocked this village, but we reported the truth about what was happening in this village. If we are “smugglers”, then we are “smugglers” of news,” Absalamova said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2023, residents of the village of Soyudlu protested against the construction of an artificial reservoir for the drainage of gold mining waste at the Gedabay deposit. Details are given in the “Caucasian Knot” report “Protests in Soyudlu: People against the Mine”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She refused to answer the state prosecutor’s questions about the activities of Abzas Media and the functional responsibilities of the arrested employees. “This is a political process, not a legal one, so I will not answer questions,” the journalist said, adding that everyone who is in the dock with her are “good people”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She also condemned the propaganda campaign against the arrested journalists of Abzas Media and other publications in pro-government Media. “We are called “enemies of the people”, “spies”. The time will come when all those who fabricate criminal cases against us and justify it will be exposed, as happened with those who carried out Stalin’s repressions. And we, free and honest journalists, cannot be silenced,” Absalamova summed up, causing applause from the journalists and activists present in the hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another defendant, investigative journalist Hafiz Babali, also drew parallels with the times of Stalin’s repressions. “Today, after a staged investigation based on fabricated charges, we appeared before the “troika”, Babali said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to him, the “true reason” of the Abzas Media case is the “final destruction” of the free press in Azerbaijan. Babali pointed out the lack of any evidence against him, despite the charges brought under seven articles of the Criminal Code. In particular, he pointed out that the investigation accuses him of “foreign currency smuggling” in 2021-2022, while he has not left the country at all since 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“If there was no illegal import of money, then there could not have been any “legalization” of it. The investigation claims that I was a party to 15 grant agreements, but does not provide any evidence,” Babal\u0131 noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He called the accusations against him of “committing crimes as part of an organized group” absurd. Babal\u0131 said that he only knew director Ulvi Hasanli and editor-in-chief Sevinj Vagifgizi at Abzas Media, and he was not familiar with the other defendants in the case before his arrest. Babal\u0131 said that he was brought in as an investigative journalist and published six materials during his year of cooperation. “There was not a single reliable piece of evidence against Babala in the case materials; the entire charge against him was based on the testimony of Mohammed Kekalov to the investigation. Today, Kekalov retracted this testimony and stated that he had not been acquainted with Babala at all before his arrest, and had only heard of him as a journalist-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Abzas Media employee Mohammed Kekalov retracted his testimony in court during the preliminary investigation, stating that he gave it under pressure. He, like Nargiz Absalamova and Hafiz Babali, rejected the charges brought against him. The Baku Court of Grave Crimes held another hearing on the Abzas Media case today, where the defendants were again heard, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":29090,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1047],"class_list":["post-30265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-feed","tag-editor"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30265"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30336,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30265\/revisions\/30336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}