Azeri president is a 'tyrant' whose reach knows no borders: media

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Washington Post in an article published on Thursday, September 28 has detailed the story of an independent Azerbaijani journalist, Afgan Mukhtarli, who was abducted in Tbilisi and dragged back to Azerbaijan,charged with "smuggling and illegal border crossing."

Mukhtarli, an outspoken critic of the authoritarian Azeri president, Ilham Aliyev, had investigated corruption in Aliyev’s defense ministry. At the time of his disappearance, he was investigating Aliyev’s personal assets in Georgia; he had also contributed reports to Meydan TV, an independent digital media service reporting on Azerbaijan. Mukhtarli was questioned in the politically motivated prosecution of another reporter, Khadija Ismayilova, and he finally fled to Georgia in 2015.

According to accounts that Mukhtarli gave his wife and lawyer, after leaving the cafe he was abducted near his home in Tbilisi, beaten, blindfolded, driven in three separate cars and brought to a border crossing with Azerbaijan, where 10,000 euros were stuffed in his pockets. On the Azeri side, he was charged with smuggling and illegal border crossing. Months later, he is still in detention in Baku.

"The Mukhtarli affair has a certain stench. Mr. Aliyev easily took his strongman methods into the heart of another country, Georgia," the article says.

"The European Parliament passed a condemnation, but otherwise this kind of behavior has not drawn the sharp international censure it deserves. In a brief statement, the State Department said it was "disturbed by the reported abduction.'"

Another reason this affair stinks is the murky role of Georgia, the article says.

"Was a nation with European Union and democratic aspirations complicit in Azerbaijan’s cross-border abduction? Georgia’s authorities denied being involved and promised an investigation, but so far very little has been produced. Georgia ought to come clean as soon as possible about the abduction, and Azerbaijan must free Mr. Mukhtarli, the victim of an involuntary forced march across an international frontier. It would also be nice if more governments denounced Mr. Aliyev’s nasty tricks. It might restrain tyrants’ reach," the article concluded.