Azeri court sentences Eynulla Fatullayev to 2.5 years for libel

Eynulla Fatullayev, editor and founder of newspapers Real Azerbaijan and Everyday Azerbaijan, was found guilty of disseminating false information about a 1992 attack during the country's six-year war with Armenia.

The suit had been filed in a Baku district court by a member of a refugee group who claimed that Fatullayev had said on a Web site that Azerbaijanis were also to blame for the assault, a court spokesman said.

Authorities say 613 Azerbaijanis were killed when Armenian forces on Feb. 26, 1992, attacked the village of Khodzhaly, in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian forces do not deny the attack, but say the death toll is exaggerated.

"Eynulla Fatullayev said in court that he had never written that Azeris were killed by Azeris," his lawyer Isaxan Asurov told The Associated Press.

Asurov argued that his client had made no false statements, and that he should not be prosecuted for libel as Internet discussions did not amount to media publications.

The Opposition Party of National Independence of Azerbaijan condemned the ruling, saying in a statement that it amounted to authorities "pressuring, intimidating and persecuting independent media and freedom of speech."

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

The government of President Ilham Aliyev, 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/