Azerbaijan: Into the hellholes of Aliyev – 2024-02-27 23:59:23

Azerbaijan’s president is targeted for jailing journalists and torture in prisons

At a time when Armenia and Azerbaijan, after the meeting between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azeri President Ilham Aliyev in Munich, are expressing interest in starting a peace process between them, Aliyev’s politics outside (with a focus on the Caucasus) and inside his country is beginning to occupy the international media.

Aliyev was once again sworn in as president on February 14, after an electoral process that was rigged so that – as international journalistic research shows – he secured 92% of the vote through selection and manipulation of international observers. However, it is not the elections that put him in the target of the research groups of major media outlets, which, under the coordination of the website Forbidden Stories, have been publishing a series of reports as part of the journalistic project for about a month now.

«The Baku Connection».

The reason why journalists from France 24, RFI, OCCRP, Paper Trail Media, “Guardian”, RTS, IRPI, “Le Monde”, Radio France, Knack, “Le Soir”, NRC, ZDF and “Der Standard” deal with Aliyev’s facts are that shortly after his troops occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, driving Armenians out of the enclave, police in Baku began arresting journalists from Abzas Media, one of the country’s last independent media outlets.

Abzas’s journalistic work particularly disturbed the Aliyev regime that has ruled Azerbaijan since 2003, since they were investigating in depth issues such as torture in prisons and illegalities in the gold mine in Gadabek that lead to ecological destruction and health problems of citizens. For its prisons, where torture is alleged, Azerbaijan has received tens of millions of euros in funding from the EU through the Council of Europe, while the gold of the gold mine ends up in major technology companies, including Tesla, HP, Samsung and Apple.

“shut them up”

The result was that the 34-year-old editor-in-chief of Abzas Sevinds Vakifgizi and its founder, Ulvi Hasanli, ended up in prison, convicted of… illegal (undeclared) currency. Media journalists Elnara Gasimova, Mahamad Kekalov, Hafiz Babali and Nargiz Absalamova also ended up in prison.

The same fate with other corresponding charges was met by seven other journalists in Azerbaijan in the days before the February 7 elections, while according to journalistic investigations into the actions of the Aliyev regime, mass arrests of public interest witnesses, activists, trade unionists were made in all the previous months , other journalists and a well-known academic.

These revelations as well as the recorded arrests and prosecutions come at a time when Ilham Aliyev is increasingly involved in the geopolitical game between the West on the one hand and Russia, Turkey and Iran on the other. In his recent visit to Turkey, the president of Azerbaijan claimed that his country’s armed forces have incorporated the model of the Turkish armed forces, implying that they have NATO-level structure and readiness.

Following their statements, Aliyev and Tayyip Erdogan reaffirmed how great a success they consider the occupation and annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh, while also presenting their plan to invite the pseudo-state of Cyprus and Ersin Tatar to the informal summit of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS). which will be convened in Susa in July.

Against France

At the same time, Aliyev appears to have opened a front mainly with the French government, probably because in October, and while the tension in Karabakh was still fresh, Armenia and France signed a defense agreement.

In a report on the website of the French channel France 24, which participates in the project “The Baku Connection”, Azerbaijan’s strategy towards France is recorded, which according to the findings has three different axes. Aliyev banned French observers from watching the election, which he won with 92 percent, then used the Baku Initiative Group, an initiative that emerged from the last meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement chaired by Azerbaijan, to issue analyzes and announcements against “French neo-colonialism” and the “Macron dictatorship”. Finally, the Aliyev regime also launched and financed a smear campaign against the Paris Olympics to be held this summer.

This shift towards the alliance with Russia, Turkey and Iran, which is observed and emerges from the journalistic research, was also prioritized by Aliyev himself in his speech after his last formal victory in the elections. At the time he had declared that 20-30 countries (he meant Western ones) cannot speak on behalf of the international community and had added in Erdogan style: “Should we bow our heads to those who do not accept us somewhere? Of course not! Our family is the Turkic world. We fit perfectly there.”

See also: Armenia: “Fire” against Azerbaijan – “They want a total war”

Azerbaijan: OSCE denounces Aliyev’s re-election without ‘contest’

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