Azerbaijan
Editor of newspaper arrested on four chargesPosted Oct 25 2006
Shahin Agabayli, editor-in-chief of Milli Yol, a weekly Azerbaijan opposition, was arrested and tried in August on four charges. He received a year in prison for allegedly insulting and blackmailing former parliament spokesman Arif Ramhimzadeh. “The charges stem from a 2005 article, although Agabayli reportedly did not write the article and was not editor at the time of its publication,” IPI said in a public statement. Ramhimzadeh also faces criminal defamation charges for an article that links Interior Minister Ramil Usubov to Haji Mamedov, a former Interior Ministry officer charged with murder and kidnapping. IPI Director Johann Fritz stated, “We strongly believe that prison terms are never justified for defamation cases, no matter how unsettling or offensive they may seem to those involved.”
http://www.freemedia.at/cms/ipi/statements_detail.html?ctxid=CH0055&docid=CMS1155302363379&year=2006