Azerbaijan: head of oppositional party convicted for slander

A court in Baku has sentenced Ali Aliev, the chairman of the oppositional "Citizens and Development" Party, to five months in prison after finding him guilty of defamation under a lawsuit filed by Emil Djafarov, a border guard. The defence treats the verdict as a political order.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that two border guards, Colonel Emil Djafarov and Captain Ramin Adilov, who survived the helicopter crash on November 30, 2021, sued Ali Aliev after he had expressed, in his interview with the Osmanqızı TV YouTube channel, his doubts about the fact that the border guards had survived, as "they hadn't even a scratch in their faces."

Aliev has stated that he had no intent to slander the frontier officers. "He simply, after analyzing the facts, concluded that they were not in the helicopter," Djavad Djavadov, an advocate, asserts.

At the court session, Aliev felt bad, but the judge continued the trial anyway, the advocate has added.

Khalid Agaliev, a lawyer, believes that bringing citizens to criminal liability for defamation lawsuits is contrary to the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR); and the punishment for it cannot be in the form of imprisonment.