The founder of the Election Monitoring Center, Anar Memmedli has filed a lawsuit in the Sabayil District Court against the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. Mammedli told this to the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety.
“After the abolishment of the state registration of the Election Monitoring Center (EMC) by the Khatai District Court 14 May 2008, the website www.smm-az.org , belonging to EMC was blocked,” said Mammedli. “After this, I opened the website www.smm-az.org in my own name. However, twice already I have gone to open my site, only to find that it is blocked. The site is blocked only in Azerbaijan. Therefore, I sent an information request to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to determine the cause of the block within Azerbaijan. It was noted in the registration information that the site www.smm-az.org does not belong to the individual person, but to the organization “EMC-Azerbaijan,” according to the chief of the information community development department of the ministry, R.Gulmemmedov. After this response I reviewed the registration of the website and I got the information from the server that the site belonged to me.”
After this, Mammedli again appealed to the ministry demanding to unblock the website within Azerbaijan. However, the ministry declared that the limitation of the entrance to the site www.smm-az.org was carried out on the basis of the Khatai District Court’s May 2008 decision. Because www.smm-az.org is registered to Mammedli personally, and any organization, A. Memmedli has now appealed to the court, demanding that his website be unblocked.