Azerbaijan
Azeri Editor SentencedPosted Nov 2 2007
On Oct. 31, the Azeri Court for Grave Crimes sentenced Eynulla Fatullayev, editor and founder of Realny Azerbaijan and Gundelik Azerbaijan, to an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence for threatening terror and inciting hatred through his journalistic work. In particular, the courts cite his March 30, 2007, story abou the dangers Azerbaijan would face if the U.S. and Iran went to war, as evidence. He wrote the story under a pseudonym.
Fatullayev has already been serving a two-and-one-half year sentence since April of this year for libel. The Azeri courts claimed that the article in question defamed Azerbaijan's army because it talked about the mass killing of civilians in a separatist war in the early 1990s, Reuters reports.
In May 2007, shortly after his arrest, Fatullayev's newspapers were shut down and all the computers were confiscated.
The International Press Institute (IPI) reports that this sentence is the longest such sentence for a journalist in the new republic's 16-year history. IPI also notes that Azerbijan has the most imprisoned journalists, incarcerated for their work, of any European and Central Asian countries.