Mehman Aliyev (YouTube/Human Rights House Network)
Mehman Aliyev, the head of independent Baku-based news outlet the Turan Information Agency, was arrested on 24 August for ‘tax evasion’ and ‘abuse of power’, according to the agency.
Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Taxes initiated criminal proceedings against the agency on 7 August and froze their accounts a few days later.
Aliyev’s lawyer Fuad Aghayev said his client’s detention was illegal. International media watchdog Reporters Without Borders have called the charges against Aliyev and Turan ‘trumped-up’.
According toTuran, Aliyev was summoned to the ministry for questioning, where he was then arrested and taken to Baku’s Yasamal District Police Station.
A Baku court will decide on 25 August whether to grant him bail.
Two hours before he was detained, Aliyev toldCaucasian Knot that Turan may be forced to close due to pressure from the authorities.
The ministry raided Turan’s offices on 16 August, seizing financial records, and personal data of journalists, Caucasian Knot reported.
Johann Bihr, the head of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk of Reporters Without Borders, said on 25 August that Aliyev is one of the pioneers of journalism in the country, whose ‘only crime is to have headed the country’s last independent media outlet’.
Turan Information Agency have in the past resisted government censorship. In an interview with OC Media back in July, Aliyev criticised a government scheme to give free flats to journalists, saying it’s aim was to ‘silence the media and control it’.
International media watchdog the Committee to Protect Journalists also condemned Aliyev’s arrest, calling on the authorities to immediately release him.
‘Azerbaijan must stop this politically motivated persecution of Mehman Aliyev and the Turan news agency’, the committee’s Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. ‘[The] authorities have systematically jailed journalists and squeezed out independent media outlets by abusing the criminal code’, she added.
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Mehman Aliyev, the head of independent Baku-based news outlet the Turan Information Agency, was arrested on 24 August for ‘tax evasion’ and ‘abuse of power’, 
