Associated Press
March 2 2005
Magazine editor killed in Azerbaijan
3/2/2005, 3:51 p.m. CT
The Associated Press
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) – The editor of a magazine critical of
Azerbaijan’s government was shot and killed Wednesday in the lobby of
his apartment building, police and colleagues said.
Seven shots were fired and four struck Elmar Huseinov, founder and
editor of the opposition magazine Monitor, police at the scene in
Baku, the capital, told journalists.
Tension between the government and the opposition in tightly
controlled Azerbaijan has increased since the October 2003 election
in which Ilham Aliev replaced his father, longtime leader Geidar
Aliev, as president in a vote the opposition called fraudulent.
Several opposition leaders, including newspaper editors, have been
sentenced to prison over unrest that followed the election.
Monitor has been published and sold privately since a decision
forbidding the state printing and distribution company from selling
it.
It was ordered closed twice. After the first order, in 1998, it
continued publishing under a slighly different name. It shut after
the second order, in 2002, but renewed publication after a change in
media licensing legislation the same year.
Huseinov served six months in prison in 2001-2002 after a successful
libel suit by the mayor of Baku.
Last November a court ordered his property confiscated to pay $20,000
fine connected with a 2003 suit by the representative of Azerbaijan’s
Nakhichevan enclave over an article titled “The Godfather.”
Nakhichevan, which is on the Iranian border, lies entirely within the
neighbouring state of Armenia. It has an area of 2,124 sq miles with
a population of 333,200. The magazine article compared Nakhichevan
residents to Sicilians. Huseinov did not have enough property to
cover the fine.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress