In Azerbaijan, court upholds conviction of "Khural" editor-in-chief

Today, the Baku Court of Appeal has dismissed the appeal complaint lodged by Avaz Zeinalov, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Khural", and upheld the decision of the First Instance Court, which had sentenced the journalist to 9 years in prison.

Today, at consideration of his appeal complaint, Avaz Zeinalov reiterated that he had been arrested on a political order, because of his sharp criticism of authorities' policies.

Elchin Sadygov, the journalist's advocate, asked for acquittal of his client on all points of the indictment.

"No proofs that Avaz Zeinalov had taken a bribe were presented, apart from allegations of some false witnesses, who asserted that they had heard about transfer of money to Avaz Zeinalov. The evidence of the main witness, a former MP Gyulyar Akhmedova, who claimed that Avaz Zeinalov had allegedly extorted a bribe from her for non-publishing compromising materials about her, was also not supported by any proofs. Akhmedova presented two audio records to the court. One of them contained her conversation with Zeinalov, where Akhmedova herself offered money to Zeinalov, but he flatly refused. The other audio record of their telephone conversation was forged; and in general the voices there were unintelligible," said Sadygov.

As for the allegations of non-fulfilment of court judgments on claims of three persons, the majority of the monetary fines Zeinalov had repaid, the lawyer said, adding that the journalist was ready to pay the rest of them, but the property of the edition was confiscated.

The amount of the taxes, non-paid by the journalist, was also not true, as Sadygov pointed out during the hearing.

In his turn, the representative of the Ministry of Taxes demanded from the court to increase the amount of the tax penalty from 4076 manats to 7000 manats (about 8920 US dollars).

The prosecution asked the court to leave the judgment of first instance in force. After a 10-minute discussion, Judge Gasymov announced that the verdict remained unchanged.

The lawyer Elchin Sadygov has treated the decision of the Court of Appeal as "unfair and unlawful". He also announced his intention to file an appeal complaint to the Supreme Court.

"But, without waiting for the outcome of the proceeding at the Supreme Court, we will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)," said the lawyer Sadygov.