At the trial of the Toplum TV case, the defendants challenged the state prosecutor, but the court rejected the challenge and the defense’s motions.
In the dock are the founder of the publication Alesker Mammadli, the resource’s employees Mushvig Jabbar and Farid Ismailov, the head of Toplum TV’s partner organization – the Institute of Democratic Initiatives (IDI) Akif Gurbanov and the institute’s employees Ruslan Izzetli, Ali Zeynal, Ramil Babayev, Ilkin Amrakhov and Elmir Abbasov. With the exception of the latter, all are in custody, and Abbasov is “under police supervision”.
The preparatory hearing on the Toplum TV case continued today in the Baku Court of Grave Crimes. The defendants’ defense attorneys petitioned to have the criminal case dismissed and also asked to change their preventive measure to house arrest if the first petition was rejected, said Ruslan Izzetli’s lawyer Bakhruz Bayramov.
According to Bayramov, the defendants challenged state prosecutor Rauf Malyshov. “The indictment is simply a disgrace. Some parts of it are simply copied from the Abzas Media case materials. In particular, entire paragraphs were taken from Ruslan Izzetli, the name of Abzas Media director Ulvi Hasanli was simply changed to Ruslan Izzetli. The whole point is that the investigation has no evidence, so they simply copied parts of the Abzas Media case, since both cases are essentially identical. What is interesting is that the state prosecutor in both cases is the same prosecutor – Rauf Malyshov. Therefore, the accused challenged him, also pointing to the bias of the state prosecutor in the Abzas Media trial,” Bayramov said. Akif Gurbanov’s lawyer Fuad Agayev also criticized the indictment. “It seems that the employees of the investigative body do not know not only the rules of law, but also the norms of the Azerbaijani language. The indictment contains a sentence consisting of 4,729 words. This sentence broke the Guinness Book of Records – Irish writer James Joyce, who wrote a sentence of 4,391 words. The sentence must express a complete thought, and this long sentence in a criminal case does not express anything. The sentence included in the Guinness Book refers to a work of fiction, and here we are talking about the fate of nine people accused of serious crimes,” said Agayev.
Alesker Mammadli’s lawyer Fakhraddin Mekhtiyev emphasized that there is no reliable evidence against his client in the case.
“There is no evidence in the case other than the money planted in Alesker Mammadli’s apartment. Even if the amount of money claimed by the investigation had actually been found on him, there would be nothing criminal about it. Alesker Mammadli, being a lawyer, provided services to various structures and received legal monetary compensation for this, regularly paid taxes on his income. But despite this, and the serious problems with his health, the court refused to even transfer him to house arrest,” Mehdiyev noted.
According to the lawyer, the prosecutor’s challenge and the defense’s motions to terminate the criminal case and change the preventive measure were dismissed. The next hearing is scheduled for May 5. “This will be a continuation of the preparatory hearing, because some lawyers still have motions,” Mehdiyev said.
An employee of the Baku Court of Grave Crimes confirmed that a preparatory hearing was held today in the Toplum TV case. Representatives of the prosecution were unavailable for comment.
Toplum TV positions itself as an independent platform for expressing different opinions on socio-political and socio-economic events. Founded in 2016, the project has been headed by investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova for the past two years. During the presidential elections in February 2024, Toplum TV journalists published materials on violations and falsifications.