Azerbaijani prosecutors file new charges against imprisoned newspaper editor

Eynulla Fatullayev, editor and founder of the newspapers Real Azerbaijan and Everyday Azerbaijan, was charged on Wednesday with making a terrorist threat, said Arif Babayev, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Security.

He gave no details for the new charges.

Real Azerbaijan's acting editor Singiz Sultansoi said newspaper employees were baffled by the new charges.

"We are journalists, we are peaceful people. The editors and journalists cannot understand: what kind of terrorist threat journalists pose?" Sultansoi said.

On Sunday, officers from the Emergency Situations Ministry evicted the newspaper's editorial staff from its offices, saying that the lower floors of the building were in a dangerous condition and in need of structural work. But investigators seized documents and computer records and Sultansoi said the office had been sealed off by investigators on Tuesday.

The weekly Russian-language Real Azerbaijan has a print run of 25,000, while the Azeri-language daily Everyday Azerbaijan has a circulation of about 10,000.

Last month, a Baku court found Fatullayev guilty of disseminating false information about a 1992 attack during the country's six-year war with Armenia over the territory of Nagorno Karabakh. Opposition leaders called the prosecution part of a government campaign to silence critical media.

Last year, a court gave Fatullayev a two-year suspended sentence for libeling a top law enforcement official.

The government of President Ilham Aliev, who took over from his father in a 2003 election denounced by opponents as a sham, has faced persistent criticism over the heavy-handed treatment of independent media. The Associated Press

/The International Herald Tribune/