Azerbaijani Press Council calls on MIA's leaders to investigate attack on staff members of newspaper "Azadlyg"

Today, staff members of the newspaper "Azadlyg" and members of the Azerbaijani Press Council have sent to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) the appeal calling to investigate the incident which occurred with journalists of the opposition newspaper on April 27.

Let us remind you that Khaliq Garaev, a staff member of the newspaper "Azadlyg", states that on April 27, at about noon, near the metro station "The 20th of January", he was subjected to physical pressure from inspectors of the Transport Department of the Ministry of Transport. The journalist's camera was also broken. Seimour Khaziev, another staff member of the newspaper "Azadlyg", who tried to protect his colleague, was also attacked. This was reported by the journalists injured in the incident.

The appeal sent on behalf of the editorial staff Interior to Ramil Usubov, the head of the MIA. This was told to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent by Seimour Khaziev, the head of the Politics Department of the newspaper "Azadlyg".

According the Seimour Khaziev's information, the interests of the injured journalists will be represented by the Media Rights Institute (MRI).

"Besides, the Azerbaijani Press Council of Azerbaijan has also appealed to the MIA asking to investigate an attack on us. However, till present, no representatives of the MIA or the Ministry of Transport did respond to complaints in connection with the attack on us," Seimour Khaziev has stated.

The journalist doubts that an objective investigation will be carried out.

Earlier, Seimour Khaziev was also subjected to physical attacks. In particular, at night on March 26, 2011, he was kidnapped by unidentified persons in the village of Djeiranbatan, 20 km north of the capital of Azerbaijan. The kidnappers beat him, took away two mobile phones and stole information from the database of his laptop. The journalist believes that the attack is related to his professional activities, publications that criticized the authorities, and his active citizenship. The unidentified kidnappers advised Seimour Khaziev to "be clever" and not to criticize President Ilham Aliev.

"However, the attackers were never found. I went to court to appeal against inaction of the investigators. However, no results followed. Finally, after several cycles of judicial procedures, the Baku Court of Appeals sent the case back to the MIA for re-investigation. However, the investigators still do not carry out any active investigation actions," Seimour Khaziev has stated.