Georgian Border Control Allegedly Denies Critical Azerbaijani Journalist Departure to Turkey
According to media reports, a critical Azerbaijani journalist, editor-in-chief of Azel.tv, Afgan Sadigov, was denied permission to leave Tbilisi international airport for Turkey and was told by border control officials that he could only fly to Azerbaijan.
“They stopped me at the passport control checkpoint at Tbilisi airport. They said there was an issue with my passport. They prohibited me from exiting to countries other than Azerbaijan. They didn’t specify which country imposed the ban. They only mentioned that I could obtain this information from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia. Today, I will go to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia to investigate the issue,” the journalist himself told the Azerbaijani service of the Voice of America. He attributes the incident to his critical “posts and videos.”
He said that he could not return to Azerbaijan because he would be arrested there. He also noted that he has received threats in Georgia as well and that he wants to leave Georgia for a safer place.
The journalist has been reportedly living in Georgia since last December. Sadigov was arrested in Azerbaijan in May 2020 on charges of extortion. He was later sentenced to seven years in prison, which was eventually reduced to four years by the Supreme Court. However, he was released by amnesty after about two years in prison. He went on hunger strike for 242 days in prison.
Another Azerbaijani journalist fiercely critical of Azerbaijani government, Afgan Mukhtarli was one of the first to spread the news that Sadigov was not allowed to fly to Turkey. Mukhtarkli who due to his opposition activity fled Azerbaijan and resided in Georgia went missing in Tbilisi on May 29, 2017. The journalist somehow ended up in Baku, Azerbaijan soon after, where authorities sentenced him to six years in prison on charges of illegal border crossing, smuggling money, and police disobedience. He was released after spending some two years in jail and claimed in 2021 that not only had Ivanishvili known about plans to kidnap him but that Tbilisi received a bribe of USD 3 million from the Azeri government for the abduction to take place.
Later in 2022, Ioseb (Soso) Gogashvili, former deputy head of the State Security Service of Georgia (SSG) who was arrested on July 16 that year, alleged that ex-PM and ruling Georgian Dream party founder Bidzina Ivanishvili ordered the kidnapping of Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Mukhtarli.
On July 14, 2021 Azerbaijani opposition blogger Huseyn Bakikhanov died in Tbilisi under suspicious circumstances after falling several stories from the Stamba Hotel roof in downtown Tbilisi. Two days before dying, Bakikhanov said in a video recorded in an ambulance car that five persons had assaulted him in central Tbilisi. “I cannot say for sure that Azerbaijani Government organized the attack, but it cannot be ruled out,” he noted.
