BAKU (Reuters) -The United States has urged authorities in Azerbaijan to release several human rights advocates, government critics and journalists detained recently in the latest in a series of cases that have prompted Western concern about free speech there.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken listed Rufat Safarov, Sevinj Vagifgizi, Azer Gasimli, Farid Mehralizada, Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, Gubad Ibadoghlu and others as among those arrested for their work on human rights issues in the South Caucasus nation.
"The United States is deeply concerned not only by these detentions, but by the increasing crackdown on civil society and media in Azerbaijan," Blinken said in a statement on Wednesday.
Oil-rich Azerbaijan, which recently hosted the U.N. climate summit, has rejected Western criticism of its human rights record. It says comments by Western diplomats calling for the release of activists and journalists amount to interference in its judicial system.
Safarov, a former prosecutor who runs a rights group called Defense Line, was placed in pre-trial detention for four months last week on allegations of fraud and hooliganism, which he denies. He previously served three years for bribery before he was pardoned by President Ilham Aliyev in 2019.
Vagifgizi, editor-in-chief of Abzas Media, which has reported on alleged embezzlement of public funds by government officials, has been held in pre-trial detention since November 2023.
Gasimli, a political scientist and government critic, was sent to pre-trial detention on Wednesday for four months on suspicion of extortion, which he rejects, his lawyer said.
The court's move followed on the heels of a separate court decision on Sunday to order four months of pre-trial detention for six journalists from the independent Berlin-based Meydan TV channel on charges of foreign currency smuggling.
The journalists all deny the allegations and say they are being persecuted for their reporting, a lawyer for one of them told Reuters.
Similar accusations have landed other journalists and human rights figures in detention recently.