Nargiz Absalamova, a reporter for anti-corruption investigative outlet Abzas Media, has been detained since November 2023. In June 2025, she was sentenced to eight years in prison on multiple financial crime charges in relation to alleged receipt of Western donor funding.
Absalamova 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 November 20, 2023, police in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, arrested Abzas Media director Ulvi Hasanli and project manager Mahammad Kekalov and searched the outlet’s offices, where they claimed to have found 40,000 euros (US$43,770). Police arrested Abzas Media chief editor Sevinj Vagifgizi the following day. A court later ordered Hasanli, Kekalov, and Vagifgizi into pretrial detention on charges of conspiring to bring a large sum of money into the country unlawfully. Police also interrogated other Abzas Media employees, including Absalamova, reports said.
On November 30, officers at the Baku Police Department summoned Absalamova for a second round of questioning as a witness in the case against her colleagues and arrested her on the same currency smuggling charges, according to media reports.
On November 28, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the U.S., German, and French envoys and accused their embassies and organizations registered in those countries of illegally funding Abzas Media. Reports in Azerbaijani state and pro-government media used materials that apparently had been leaked from authorities’ investigation into Abzas Media to accuse the outlet’s staff of illegally bringing undeclared grants from foreign donor organizations into the country.
In December 2023 and January 2024, authorities arrested Abzas Media journalists Hafiz Babali and Elnara Gasimova on the same charges.
Absalamova and her colleagues denied the charges. A statement issued by Abzas Media said the charges were retaliation by Aliyev for “a series of investigations into the corruption crimes committed by the president of the country and his appointed officials.”
In the months prior to the arrests, Abzas Media published series of investigations into the wealth of public figures such as the son-in-law and other family members of President Aliyev, the head of Azerbaijan’s state security service, and the country’s foreign minister.
Abzas Media is one of three major outlets – including Toplum TV 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 surge in Azerbaijani authoritarianism following the country’s military recapture of the Nagorno-Karabakh region in September 2023.
Azerbaijani law requires civil society groups to obtain state approval for foreign grants, which authorities accuse Abzas Media and other outlets of failing to do.
In rulings on similar cases, the European Court of Human Rights stressed that such an omission was punishable under Azerbaijani law by fines, not criminal sanctions. Independent experts say that authorities refuse to register independent organizations seeking foreign grants, making it impossible to legally receive them.
Azerbaijani Minister of Internal Affairs Vilayat Eyvazov told CPJ by email on November 30 that any claims that charges against the outlet’s staff were related to their work were “completely groundless.”
In August 2024 authorities brought seven new economic crime charges against the Abzas journalists, including money laundering and tax evasion, increasing the maximum prison sentence to up to 12 years.
On June 20, 2025, a court sentenced Absalamova to eight years in prison and her colleagues to between 7.5 and nine years. As the verdicts were read out, Abzas Media journalists turned their backs on the judges and held up posters of the outlet’s corruption investigations into senior officials, including the president’s family.
On September 9, a Baku court upheld the sentences against Absalamova and the other journalists jailed in the Abzas Media case.
As of September 2025, Absalamova remains at the Baku Pretrial Detention Center No.3, pending her transfer to prison after the rejection of her appeal. Absalamova and her colleagues have repeatedly alleged ill-treatment after reporting on jail conditions and other rights violations and undertook two hunger strikes in July 2025 in protest.
CPJ did not receive any reply to emailed requests in September 2025 for comment from the office of Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev and the Penitentiary Service.