Mushfig Jabbar, a video editor for independent online news outlet Toplum TV, has been detained since March 2024 on currency smuggling charges related to alleged receipt of Western donor funding.
Jabbar is one of at least 25 journalists and media workers jailed between late 2023 and August 2025 in a major crackdown on the independent press and civil society in Azerbaijan.
On March 6, 2024, dozens of plainclothes police officers in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, raided the office shared by Toplum TV and affiliated nonprofit Institute for Democratic Initiatives, confiscated their equipment, and took around a dozen Toplum and IDI staff to Baku City Police Department for questioning.
Most of the journalists were released later the same day, but police arrested Jabbar and Toplum TV journalists Farid Ismayilov and Elmir Abbasov on charges of conspiring to smuggle currency into the country after claiming to find around 3,000 euros (US$3,280) in each of their homes. On March 8, police arrested Toplum TV founder Alasgar Mammadli on the same charges. A court ordered Jabbar and Mammadli to be held in pretrial detention and released Ismayilov and Abbasov pending trial. Several IDI staff were also charged and jailed.
The journalists deny the charges, which are punishable by up to eight years in prison under Article 206.3.2 of Azerbaijan’s criminal code, saying police planted the money in their homes.
Toplum TV is one of three major outlets — including Abzas Media and Meydan TV — from among Azerbaijan’s last remaining independent media targeted over alleged receipt of Western donor money since late 2023. The crackdown has been linked to a decline in Azerbaijani-Western relations and a surge in Azerbaijani authoritarianism, and follows Azerbaijan’s recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh from ethnic Armenian rule in September 2023.
Using information attributed to the police investigation into Toplum TV, pro-government Azerbaijani Press Agency alleged that the outlet illegally received $500,000 from Western donors to foment unrest.
Khadija Ismayilova, Toplum TV’s chief editor and a multiple award-winning investigative journalist jailed from 2014 to 2016 in retaliation for her work, told CPJ the charges against the outlet were “absolutely absurd.” Shortly after the police raid, Toplum TV’s Instagram account was deleted, and its YouTube channel was renamed and its content deleted. Ismayilova said this showed that authorities’ “real intention” is to “silence any platform where criticism is expressed.”
On January 17, 2025 authorities announced a series of new economic crime charges against the Toplum TV staff, including tax evasion and money laundering, and rearrested Ismayilov.
In April 2025, the trial of the Toplum TV and IDI staff got underway. If convicted, they face up to 12 years in prison.
CPJ emailed the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Office of the Prosecutor General, and the office of the President of Azerbaijan for comment in August 2025, but did not receive any replies.