CPJ Condemns Violence Against Abzas Media Journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the use of violence against journalists during a preliminary hearing on August 12 at the appellate court in the case of Abzas Media.

The organization stated that the journalists should be acquitted and released immediately.

Sevinj Vagifgizi, Nargiz Absalamova, and Elnara Gasimova were held behind glass in a far corner of the courtroom during the hearing presided over by Judge Zafar Ahmadov at the Baku Court of Appeals.

They expressed outrage that they could not hear what their lawyers were saying because the microphones were not working during the proceedings. The judge then ordered them to be removed from the courtroom.

At this time, Penitentiary Service employees roughly pushed them.

Five employees of the online publication Abzas Media—director Ulvi Hasanli, editor-in-chief Sevinj Vagifgizi, translator Mohammed Kekalov, and reporters Nargiz Absalamova and Elnara Gasimova—as well as Hafiz Babaly, an investigative journalist and head of the economic department at the Turan news agency, were arrested between November 2023 and January 2024 on charges of currency smuggling. In June 2024, Farid Mehralizade, an economic commentator for the Azerbaijani service of Radio Liberty, was also arrested in connection with this case.

Following the preliminary investigation in August 2024, the defendants were charged with six additional articles of the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan. They rejected the charges and claimed they were being persecuted for their investigative journalism.

On June 20, 2025, the court sentenced the journalists and staff of the Azerbaijani online publication Abzas Media to long prison terms. The outlet's director, Ulvi Hasanli; editor-in-chief, Sevinj Vagifgizi; investigative journalist Hafiz Babaly; and economist Farid Mehralizade each received nine years in prison. Nargiz Absalamova and Elnara Gasimova were sentenced to eight years each, and Mohammed Kekalov was sentenced to seven and a half years.

The Abzas Media case marked the beginning of a series of arrests of independent media journalists in Azerbaijan starting in November 2023. Several criminal cases have been initiated under a similar scenario, including collective arrests of employees from independent online resources, Toplum TV and Meydan TV.