Azerbaijani Appeal Court considers the case about attack on journalist Halil

Today, the Baku Appeal Court in Azerbaijan, presided by Gail Mamedov, held a preparatory session on the case about Sergey Strekalin's attack on Agil Halil, journalist of the "Azadlyg" (Freedom) newspaper, committed on March 13 this year.

Defendant Strekalin was absent at today's court session. It became known in the course of the hearing that he had expressed no intention to appear at the trial.

Meanwhile, Strekalin's advocate Akif Melikov asked the court to acquit Strekalin from Article 234.1 ("Purchase and keeping of drugs").

In his turn, Halil's advocate Elchin Sadygov asked the court to acquit Strekalin from Article 127.1 ("Deliberate infliction of minor damage to one's health"), since he did not knife the journalist.

Besides, Sadygov moved a petition to hold a partial investigation and to request directly on behalf of the court (not of the bodies running the investigation) references from mobile phone operators whether really offensive SMS messages were sent to Strekalin from Halil's phones.

After a short meeting, the court rejected Sadygov's petition and appointed further considerations of the case on August 27.

Elchin Sadygov told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that he would file a cassation complaint to the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan against the ruling of the preparatory session of the appeal instance not to hold the requested partial investigation.