An Azerbaijani court has sentenced independent journalist Nargiz Absalamova to eight years in prison following a defiant final speech denouncing government corruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Absalamova, 25, a reporter for the investigative outlet Abzas Media, has been held in pre-trial detention for 19 months. She is one of several journalists arrested in a sweeping crackdown on the country’s independent press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a bold address to the Baku court before her sentencing, she said that working as a journalist in Azerbaijan was a “struggle” but insisted she had no regrets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I am not sorry, because those who remain silent in the face of injustice\u2026 their children and grandchildren will eventually become victims of that injustice,” Absalamova said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abzas Media is well-known for its investigative reports into high-level corruption involving government officials and the family of President Ilham Aliyev.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the hearing, Absalamova mocked the panel of judges, offering them Russian-made heart medication to cope with her speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We brought you heart medicine to encourage you to make a fair decision,” she told the court, adding that she did not want the trial delayed should they suffer health issues from her remarks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She described the prosecution’s 27-volume case against her as “fake”, noting that the evidence relied almost entirely on her travel history, possession of standard bank cards, and a retracted statement by a co-defendant, Mahammad Kekalov.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Absalamova also detailed her history of facing police violence, including a broken tailbone suffered while covering a protest. She said that even in prison, she and her colleagues continued to investigate and expose bribery, poor medical care, and the mistreatment of detainees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The government wanted to turn off the light showing the situation in the country by arresting us,” she said. “Instead, we shone a light on the place they kept closed\u2014the detention centre.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Azerbaijan is ranked 164th out of 180 countries in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index compiled by the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Azerbaijani government has consistently denied targeting journalists for their work, maintaining that those arrested in recent crackdowns were involved in financial crimes, including smuggling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Azerbaijani court has sentenced independent journalist Nargiz Absalamova to eight years in prison following a defiant final speech denouncing government corruption. Absalamova, 25, a reporter for the investigative outlet Abzas Media, has been held in pre-trial detention for 19 months. She is one of several journalists arrested in a sweeping crackdown on the country’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":31068,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1047],"class_list":["post-31602","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\/31602","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=31602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31604,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31602\/revisions\/31604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irfs.org\/az\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}