An Azerbaijani journalist was detained in Tbilisi in connection with the protests.

Journalist Afgan Sadigov, whose extradition from Georgia was requested by the Azerbaijani authorities, stopped contacting his family on October 22. Security forces detained Sadigov before another protest in Tbilisi.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," on October 17, the 324th day of continuous protests, journalist Afgan Sadigov burned portraits of Bidzina Ivanishvili and Vladimir Putin during a protest on Rustaveli Avenue. Sadigov, who spent a long time in pretrial detention pending extradition to Azerbaijan, regularly participated in protests after his release in April. In early August, he came to Batumi to support his colleague Mzia Amaglobeli before his sentencing.

Afgan Sadigov reported being followed on October 20 and 21, and went silent on October 22, according to his wife, Sevinj Sadigova.

According to his wife, the journalist planned to attend a protest outside the Georgian parliament on the evening of October 22. He left his home to go to Rustaveli Avenue, where protesters have gathered every evening for almost 11 months, and immediately lost contact. Sadygova suggested that her husband had been detained by security forces. “It appears that this is yet another political repression by the regimes of Ilham Aliyev and Bidzina Ivanishvili,” she wrote on her Facebook page*.

Information that Sadygov had stopped communicating was also spread by his colleague Afgan Mukhtarli, an Azerbaijani journalist who was kidnapped in Tbilisi in 2017 and handed over to Baku.

“Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Sadigov left his home to take part in a protest in Tbilisi. He later stopped answering his phone. Protesters were detained on Rustaveli Avenue. It is possible that Afgan was also detained. I ask my Georgian colleagues to pay attention to this situation. You know that Afgan was recently released from prison. The authorities want to deport him to Azerbaijan. Sadigov, a critic of Aliyev, faces the risk of torture and long-term imprisonment in Baku,” Mukhtarli wrote on social media.

Tamta Mikeladze, a representative of the human rights organization “Center for Social Justice,” later received confirmation from the police that Afgan Sadigov had been arrested under administrative law. She noted that patrol police twice failed to confirm his detention to lawyers and have still not disclosed Sadigov’s charges. It is known that the journalist never showed up at the protest he was headed to – after leaving his home, he “didn’t even make it to the metro.”

Following the protest on Rustaveli Avenue, the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs officially reported the arrest of “about 20 people,” but activists claim there were more – at least 30, Tbilisi_life notes.