Azerbaijan: Investigation of Editor’s Murder Gets Murkier

The reported meeting of four journalists with an individual in Tbilisi believed to be involved in the killing of dissident Azerbaijani journalist Elmar Huseynov has provoked renewed interest in the Azerbaijani government's 20-month murder investigation. However, friends of the slain editor doubt that news of the Tbilisi encounter will hasten the closure of the case.

Elmar Huseynov, a well-known editor whose Monitor magazine took aim at both the government and opposition, was killed outside his Baku apartment building in March 2005 [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive]. The case, which has seen little progress toward the arrests and prosecution of suspects, has become a political lodestone for the government both at home and abroad, and a rallying cry for government critics.

Law enforcement officials have stated that they cannot locate the three Georgian citizens – Tahir Khubanov, Teymuraz Aliyev and a Georgian criminal figure known as "Seko" (law enforcement agencies have not disclosed his real name) – who are prime suspects in the in the crime. Both Khubanov and Aliyev, ethnic Azeris, were put on Interpol's wanted list in 2005.

But claims by a group of Azerbaijani journalists that they met with Aliyev in Tbilisi sparked fresh controversy about the government's conduct. The four journalists – Eynulla Fatullayev, former editor-in-chief of the recently closed Realniy Azerbaijan newspaper; Kanan Guluzade and Ibrahim Bayandurlu, reporters for the Russian-language daily newspaper Zerkalo; and Chingiz Sultansoy, a Baku-based freelancer – told reporters at a November 6 press conference in Baku that Aliyev stated that he is living "freely" in the Georgian capital, and that "nobody is searching for him." The journalists displayed a photo of themselves talking with a young man who they claimed to be Teymuraz Aliyev. The photo has been widely published in the Azerbaijani press.

"Journalists have easily found a man, who Azerbaijani law-enforcement agencies have not been able to apprehend for more than a year," fumed the pro-opposition Yeni Musavat newspaper on November 7. "And they met him not in America or Africa, but in Tbilisi, which is in 60 kilometers from the Azerbaijani border."

The Ministry of National Security, however, argues that the journalists are mistaken in their identification of Aliyev. The ministry reportedly showed a photo of Teymuraz Aliyev to both Rushanna Huseynova, Elmar Huseynov's widow, and to the reporters, quizzing the group on November 7 and November 8 about their meeting. Both Huseynova and the reporters maintain that the man depicted in the National Security Ministry photo is not the same as the man photographed in Tbilisi. "They showed us Aliyev's photo and said that we made a mistake," Fatullayev told the pro-opposition Turan news agency. "The man in the picture is bald, has glasses, and does not resemble the man we met in Tbilisi."

Instead, the ministry's investigators maintain that the journalists met with criminal boss Seko, another one of the alleged Georgian suspects, Fatullayev said. Investigators declined to show photos of Seko or the other suspects, citing the need for confidentiality. According to Fatullayev, the ministry's investigators argued that their interlocutor in Tbilisi more closely resembled the crime boss Seko. Officials reportedly warned the journalists not to continue with their own investigation.

Roughly a week after their announcement, though, the reporters themselves now appear divided. Zerkalo reporter Bayandurlu told EurasiaNet that he is uncertain of the identity of the man with whom the journalists met. "However, by the reaction of the Azerbaijani law enforcement agencies, I can say that the man we met in Tbilisi is quite known and influential in Georgian criminal circles, and he was aware of Elmar's murder," Bayandurlu said. "Maybe it was Seko."

Another journalist, Kanan Guluzade, however, insists that the journalists met with Teymuraz Aliyev, adding that the man repeatedly stated that he had not killed Elmar Huseynov. "He told us that his name is Teymuraz Aliyev. There were people around him who called him Teymuraz. What was the reason for him to lie to us?" Guluzade said.

Both Fatullayev and Bavandurlu stated that ministry officials blamed "distrust" of Georgian law enforcement officials for frustrating the Azerbaijani efforts to pursue the investigation. In July 2005, the office of Georgia's prosecutor general refused to extradite Khubanov and Aliyev to Azerbaijan, saying that if the suspects' guilt could be confirmed, they would be detained and stand trial in Georgia. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Meanwhile, the Huseynov case continues to attract international attention. Asked to comment on the investigation at a press briefing in Brussels on November 7, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev called Elmar Huseynov's murder a "hard blow" for Azerbaijan. "We still feel the negative consequences of this murder," local media quoted the president as saying. "It shows that some people in Azerbaijan are interested in instability in the country."

"The murderers are wanted, they have been identified," he continued. "However they are not in the country, which makes it difficult to detain them. We are waiting for Interpol to find the accused murderers to bring them to justice."

Aliyev's comments have been taken as a sign that he does not support a second line of inquiry, raised by Turkish investigators, that maintains that a criminal group headed by former Interior Ministry official Haji Mamedov was behind Huseynov's death. Mamedov, in court testimony in July 2006, claimed that his group had arranged the murder on the orders of Farhad Aliyev, a former minister of economic development who is now serving a jail sentence for allegedly plotting a coup. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive].

To date, only one person has been convicted in the Huseynov case. In July 2006, Turgay Bayramov, an Azerbaijani citizen, was sentenced to a two-year prison term for buying a cell phone and cell phone number in Baku for suspects Khubanov and Aliyev.

Meanwhile, those who were close to the slain editor say that the revelation has only further muddled Huseynov's already highly confusing murder case. "This case just confirmed that Azerbaijani law-enforcement agencies are doing quite wretchedly on this issue and the investigation is kept secret from the public for some reason," commented Arif Aliyev, a member of the board of the Elmar Huseynov Foundation, and the chairman of the media defense organization Yeni Nesil. "I believe that the latest events have a minimal chance of speeding up the resolution of the . . . murder [case] and bringing the killers to trial."

A spokesperson for the Ministry of National Security told EurasiaNet that time is needed to consider the journalists' report: "This is new information. We are verifying the facts."