Authorities ban blogger Mekhman Guseinov to leave Azerbaijan

The OSCE representative has demanded to cancel the ban imposed by the General Prosecutor's Office (GPO) of Azerbaijan on Mekhman Guseinov to go abroad. The ban has prevented the blogger from taking part in the events dedicated to human rights violations and the fight against corruption.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on March 3, 2017, Mekhman Guseinov was sentenced to two years in prison on charges of defamation; his complaints about torture after detention were treated by the court as defamation. On March 2, 2019, the blogger was released from prison.

Today, Arlem Dezir, the OSCE Spokesman on the Freedom of the Media, has condemned the ban imposed on Mekhman Guseinov's overseas travels and called on the Azerbaijani authorities to lift it. In his post on the Twitter, Mr Dezir has stressed that Guseinov had been invited by his office to a conference on journalists' safety in Vienna.

Mekhman Guseinov had planned to fly from Baku to Berlin in the morning on April 9. "At the border control, when they checked my passport, a stop signal was triggered. It turned out that the ban was imposed by the GPO. The reasons were not explained to me. I have fully served my prison term on the first charge; the second charge was dropped from me," Mr Guseinov told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

In Mekhman's opinion, he is "held hostage" because of the human rights activities of his brother, Emin Guseinov, the executive director of the Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety (IRFS), who sharply criticizes the Azerbaijani authorities.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on April 10, 2019 at 11:57 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.