An Azeri court sentenced the country's leading investigative journalist to 30 months in jail on Friday for committing "defamation of the armed forces" in a an article alleging the mass killing of civilians in 1992.
"I am innocent! Long live media freedom!" exclaimed Einulla Fatullayev, editor of newspaper Real Azerbaijan, when guards handcuffed him in the courtroom. He called the trial a "farce". The main charge against Fatullayev was based on an interview with a leader of Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, who accused Azeri troops of executing a large number of civilians in the village of Khojaly in 1992.
More than 35,000 people died in the 1992-94 conflict over Karabakh, an Armenian-populated territory now controlled by separatists along with a considerable chunk of surrounding territories. Talks on its future have so far yielded no result. The court earlier fined the Russian-language newspaper 20,000 manat ($23,000). Real Azerbaijan was created in 2005 by a group of journalists from independent magazine Monitor after its editor-in-chief, Elmar Husseinov, was murdered near his home.