Ramin Deko, a reporter for Germany-based Meydan TV, has been detained since December 2024 on currency smuggling charges in relation to alleged receipt of Western donor funding.
Deko, whose legal name is Ramin Jabrayilzade, is one of at least 25 journalists and media workers from some of Azerbaijan’s last independent news outlets arrested in an unprecedented crackdown on the independent press since late 2023. Most of them, including nine journalists from Meydan TV, have been arrested on allegations of bringing Western donor money into the country illegally. The crackdown has taken place amid declining relations with the West and a surge in Azerbaijani authoritarianism and following the country’s recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh from ethnic Armenian rule in September 2023.
Police in Baku arrested Deko along with five other Meydan TV journalists on December 6, 2024. Deko was detained at the Baku airport upon arrival from neighboring Georgia, where he was covering pro-European Union protests.
Three other journalists associated with the outlet were detained in early 2025, as well as Ulviyya Ali, a former contributor to U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Voice of America, who denied collaboration with Meydan TV.
Azerbaijan’s largest independent outlet, Meydan TV regularly reports on alleged government corruption and rights abuses. The outlet closed its Azerbaijani office under government pressure in 2014 and its website has been blocked for many years.
Acting editor-in-chief Orkhan Mammad said the arrests had “practically paralyzed” Meydan TV’s work, adding that independent Azerbaijani media would now have to operate entirely from exile “like the independent Russian press does.”
On August 28, 2025, the journalists in the Meydan TV case were charged with seven additional crimes, including illegal entrepreneurship, tax evasion, and money laundering. If found guilty on all the charges, they face up to 12 years in prison.
As of August 2025, Deko remains in Baku Pretrial Detention Center No. 3 awaiting trial, Mammad told CPJ, adding that Deko does not have any major health concerns.
CPJ emailed the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Office of the Prosecutor General, and the office of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev for comment in August 2025, but did not receive any replies.