Afghan Mukhtarli has been charged with smuggling in Baku after being kidnapped in Tbilisi. Image: MeydanTV. On 29 May, an Azerbaijani journalist and political activist was kidnapped in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi and then illegally brought across the border to Azerbaijan, where he reappeared less than 24 hours later in Azerbaijani border police custody, Human Rights Watch said today. He now faces bogus, politically motivated charges of illegal border crossing and smuggling. Georgian authorities should promptly investigate the kidnapping of the journalist, Afgan Mukhtarli, and Azerbaijani authorities should immediately release and drop all charges against him.
Mukhtarli and his wife, Leyla Mustafayeva, also an investigative journalist, have been living in Georgia since 2015 to escape the Azerbaijani government’s vicious crackdown against its critics. There are fears that Mukhtarli faces the imminent threat of ill-treatment in custody.
“Mukhtarli went to Georgia seeking safety, but it seems he was not far enough out of the Azerbaijani government’s clutches,” said Giorgi Gogia, South Caucasus director at Human Rights Watch. “The Georgian government also shares responsibility for his fate and should come clean about its role in his illegal detention and return.”
Mukhtarli, 43, is an investigative journalist who has worked for several independent and opposition media outlets, including the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Meydan TV and others. His investigative stories exposed corruption in Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense, and the extensive business networks owned by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his affiliates in neighboring Georgia.
Mukhtarli continued his activism in Tbilisi and participated in a series of protests in front of the Azerbaijani embassy. Mukhtarli’s Facebook posts often criticized government corruption and the persecution of activists in Azerbaijan. Mukhtarli also alleged on Facebook that he was being subjected to surveillance by unidentified people.
Mukhtarli told his lawyer, Elchin Sadigov, who spoke to him in custody, that unidentified men stopped him a few blocks from his house, pushed him into a car, and drove him to a park, where they put a bag over his head and beat him
