Gadzhily: over 1000 defamation trials held in Azerbaijan this year

During 2007, over 100 court trials took place in Azerbaijan on defamation charges initiated by personal accusation or in the civil order of litigations. During these processes, verdicts have been passed to arrest journalists, and fines have been imposed in the total sum of 12 million manats (12 million USD). The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was informed about it by Rashid Gadzhily, Director of the Institute of Media Rights.

According to his story, in comparison with 2005 this year the number of defamation cases has increased 10-fold. Mr Gadzhily has reminded that in the spring of 2005, after the murder of Elmar Guseinov, editor of the "Monitor" Magazine, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev called on to set up the moratorium on judicial claims against journalists. However, after arrest in summer of 2006 of satirical poet Mirza Sakit, a new wave of pressure on mass media was launched. Charges not related to slander are now used more often against the press. On this sort of charges journalists Mirza Sakit, Einullah Fatullaev, Rafik Tagi and Ganimat Zakhid have been condemned.

Mr Gadzhily has named the access of law enforcement bodies to journalists' information sources to be a dangerous phenomenon.

Mr Gadzhily has also treated as vicious the practice, when officials or policemen request the data about journalists' telephone calls from mobile operators. He sees the way out of this situation in elimination of the legislative opportunities to arrest journalists for what they have written and in adoption of the law "On Defamation".