Rasim Aliyev, the acting chairman of the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS), a then-Baku-based press freedom group, died at a hospital one day after being beaten, according to regional and international press. Aliyev also contributed reporting to several independent news outlets, including the Azerbaijan News Network, according to news reports.
In an interview Aliyev gave independent online broadcaster Meydan TV in the hospital before he died, posted on the YouTube page of the broadcaster, the 30-year-old journalist said he believed he was attacked over a post on his personal Facebook page in which he criticized Javid Huseynov, a soccer player with Azerbaijani club Gabala FC and the Azerbaijan national team. According to the video and the Azeri-language website of the U.S.-government funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Aliyev said he received a phone call from an individual who claimed to be related to Huseynov. Aliyev said the caller argued with him over the phone about the Facebook post, then asked to meet. At the meeting, after the pair shook hands, Aliyev said he received a heavy blow to his left ear and was attacked from behind.
According to news reports, Aliyev’s account to Meydan TV, and CCTV footage of the incident, around six people beat and kicked him in the Sabail district of Baku, before stealing his wallet and cell phone.
Aliyev was taken to a hospital to be treated for broken ribs and hearing loss after the attack, according to the RFE/RL Azeri service report. The RFE/RL report and a report by regional news website Kavkazsky Uzel cited Aliyev’s friends and family who visited him in the hospital as saying that some of his injuries, including a ruptured spleen and internal bleeding, were not identified by doctors until at least seven hours after the journalist was admitted to hospital, when painkillers wore off and he started to complain of severe chest pain. An urgent operation was performed following the discovery, but the journalist died shortly after surgery.
Aliyev took over as chairman of the IRFS in 2014, after its previous chairman, Emin Huseynov, was forced to go into hiding at the Swiss embassy in Baku, and later into exile, according to the press freedom group. In a statement released after Aliyev’s death, the group said: “Aliyev took it upon himself to lead IRFS through the organization’s most difficult time, when it was in effect paralyzed by never-before-seen levels [of] government pressure.” The statement said Aliyev had received numerous threats over the phone and internet, which he reported to police. Azerbaijan’s government should take “full responsibility for the murder of Rasim Aliyev and the atmosphere of intolerance and impunity within which his murder occurred,” the IRFS said.
Aliyev received threats over his work and critical posts he wrote on social networks about press freedom and human rights in Azerbaijan, according to local and international news reports and exiled journalists with whom CPJ spoke. One colleague, who asked to remain anonymous, told CPJ that Aliyev received threats after publishing an image on Facebook on July 2, 2014, the date that Azerbaijan celebrates its police, that showed a police officer punching him. On that same date a year later, Aliyev once again received threats over the image. In late July 2015, he filed a police report about a social media threat warning that he “will be punished” for images he had published of a protest calling for the resignation of Azerbaijan’s president, according to a report by the IRFS.
Amid a crackdown on traditional media in Azerbaijan, some activists and journalists have taken to social networking sites to give the public an alternative to state media, CPJ has found.
Exiled Azerbaijani reporters and international reporters with whom CPJ spoke claimed that Azerbaijani authorities were responsible for Aliyev’s death because they failed to investigate threats and created conditions in which journalists could be attacked with impunity. One local journalist, who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity, said Aliyev’s beating took place a year after authorities raided the offices of the IRFS.
Aliyev’s IRFS colleagues have argued that Azerbaijani authorities may have been involved in the journalist’s death, either by encouraging the attack or by deliberately withholding adequate medical care. Azerbaijani officials have rejected such claims as a conspiracy theory.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who is not related to the journalist, condemned the attack and called it a “threat to freedom of speech and expression,” according to regional press reports.
On April 1, 2016, the Baku Grave Crimes Court sentenced five men, including Javid Huseynov’s cousin, to prison terms of between nine and 13 years on charges of intentional infliction of grave bodily harm resulting in accidental death, according to news reports. Prosecutors argued that Huseynov himself had not ordered the attack but had known about it in advance; in a separate trial in May 2016, a district court in Baku sentenced him to four years in prison for concealing and failing to report a grave crime.
The soccer player’s cousin and two of the other men convicted over the attack admitted beating Aliyev, but said they had not intended to kill him and blamed medical staff for his death, according to news reports. The two other men denied participating in the beating. Javid Huseynov denied having any knowledge of the attack, claiming that he first learned about it through the media, reports stated.
Lawyers for both the defence and Aliyev’s family appealed the rulings, arguing that authorities ought to have prosecuted hospital doctors for negligence leading to the journalist’s death, according to news reports. The family and their lawyers also contended that Huseynov organized the beating and should have faced more severe charges.
A review of the treatment provided to Aliyev, conducted by Azerbaijan’s Health Ministry, concluded that medical staff had treated the journalist appropriately and were not responsible for his death, according to multiple news reports. In statements made to investigators and the media, doctors said that Aliyev did not have internal bleeding upon admission to hospital, and that his damaged organs ruptured while in the hospital, according to the IRFS report. The family and lawyers rejected the findings of the ministry’s investigation, saying they were not independent. They also criticized the court’s refusal to summon medical staff or request from the hospital evidence, such as Aliyev’s X-ray on admission and CCTV footage that could have called into question authorities’ version of events, according to the report.
On May 27, 2016, the Baku Appeals Court rejected Aliyev family lawyers’ petition to return the case to the Grave Crimes Court for consideration of doctors’ responsibility, according to news reports.
On October 12, 2016, the appeals court partially granted Huseynov’s appeal, reducing his sentence to one year and two months, the amount of time he had served since his arrest, and releasing him from prison, media reports stated.
In February 2017, Aliyev family lawyers filed a complaint against the authorities’ investigation into the journalist’s death at the European Court of Human Rights, citing their failure to prosecute hospital staff and insufficient prosecution of Javid Huseynov, Kavkazsky Uzel reported.
In April 2017, Baku Appeals Court upheld the sentences against Aliyev’s attackers, a decision confirmed by the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan in April 2019.