Azerbaijan: No progress on slain journalist case

Rovshan Ismayilov 3/06/06

The murder of prominent Azerbaijani investigative journalist Elmar Huseynov is unsolved a year after the act, and the case remains one of the most-discussed political issues in the country. Opposition leaders and affiliated media outlets continue to place primary blame for the shooting on President Ilham Aliyev's administration.

An outspoken critic of the government and opposition, the 38-year-old Huseynov was murdered March 2, 2005, in the stairwell of his apartment building after returning home from work. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Commenting on Huseynov's murder, Mauricio Pavesi, head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's mission to Baku, urged the Azerbaijani government to punish those responsible. "We believe that public opinion will not consider the case closed unless [the] real motivation of [the] malefactors will ... be revealed and proved in ... court," Pavesi stated in an official statement. US Ambassador Reno Harnish also called on the government to expedite its investigation. "Huseynov was not only a talented journalist, but also the voice of democracy in Azerbaijan," Harnish said in a statement issued March 2.

Both independent journalists and opposition members say they have few hopes that the government will crack the case. No information about the investigation has been made public or released to the family since last summer. State investigators allegedly say they need to conduct a criminal investigation in secret.

Huseynov's widow, Rushana, charges that officials are deliberately dragging their feet. The chief target of her ire is President Aliyev. "He said: ‘I [the president] am responsible for resolving this case, and I promise that the case will be resolved within 40 days of the crime,'" Huseynova said.

According to the state prosecutor's office and the Ministry of National Security, a warrant has been issued via Interpol for the arrest of two Georgian citizens, Tahir Khubanov and Teymuraz Aliyev, both ethnic Azerbaijanis, in connection with Huseynov's case. Azerbaijani officials state that the Georgian general prosecutor's office has refused to extradite Khubanov and Aliyev to Azerbaijan, citing a lack of evidence. Huseynov's death has been officially classified as a terrorist act.

One watchdog organization, the Public Investigation Group, contends that officials have bungled the investigation by failing to identify a motive for the crime, as well as to find who ordered Huseynov's death. "None of those who openly threatened him when he was alive, or those named in the media as potentially ordering the killing, or those who sued him was questioned by state investigators," said Shahbaz Khuduoglu, a member of the Public Investigation Group.

At a March 1 forum on Huseynov's death, Mehman Aliyev, director of the pro-opposition Turan News Agency, said that Huseynov was killed because of his independence. "Journalists lose their independence, [or it is] bought or threatened by [the] authorities ... those who remain standing are so rare they can be killed one by one," Mehman Aliyev said. In a May 2005 report, the international organization Reporters Without Borders charged that Huseynov's work as a journalist had resulted in his death.

Other opposition members and activists allege government complicity in the journalist's death. Some charge that suspect Tahir Khubanov is, in fact, a relative of Azerbaijan's general prosecutor. The prosecutor's office has denied any link with the suspects, however. "That is why there is no development in the investigation. Because it is carried out by those who killed the journalist," commented Leyla Yunus, the chairwoman of the Peace and Democracy Institute, at a March 1 forum on the Huseynov murder.

Events scheduled last week to commemorate Huseynov's death were further cause for conflict. Despite protests from Rushana Huseynova, Baku Mayr Hajibala Abutalibov organized a traditional prayer ceremony and dinner, or ehsan, in front of Huseynov's apartment building on the anniversary of his death. The US and British ambassadors joined hundreds of ordinary Azerbaijanis, who left candles and flowers in the building's stairwell, at the ceremony. Two days later, on the one-year anniversary of her husband's burial, Huseynova organized a second ehsan, saying that Huseynov's "soul needs a prayer ceremony paid for by clean money, not from the pocket of killers."

That stance also characterizes the weekly newspaper, Bakinskiye Vedomosti, published by Huseynova since shortly after her husband's death. The paper allocates most of its coverage to Huseynov's murder investigation. Meanwhile, Huseynova is taking matters into her own hands. A prospective program run by the Elmar Huseynov Foundation, a group of journalists and friends of the late editor, is intended to encourage reporters to take up investigative journalism "as Elmar did," she said. "One of those investigations could reveal Elmar's killers."

Editor's Note: Rovshan Ismayilov is a freelance journalist based in Baku

Posted March 6, 2006 © Eurasianet