Several hundred journalists, activists, and colleagues of the late Elmar Huseynov rallied and called for the government to speed up investigations into the murdered editor’s death.

BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) – About 700 journalists and rights activists rallied in Azerbaijan’s capital Saturday to protest what they call authorities’ failure to fully investigate the death of an opposition magazine editor and bring his killers to justice.
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At the protest meeting opposite the city’s National Academy of Sciences, the participants shouted “Freedom” and “Freedom of Speech.”

They then went the cemetery where the journalist is buried, and the head of the country’s journalists’ union, Azer Hasrat, read a petition calling for a speedy investigation into Huseinov’s killing and the end to official pressure on the media.

The journalist’s widow, Rushana Huseinova, told the AP that the government was trying to shift responsibility for the killing on “foreign powers.”

“From the start of the investigation you could feel efforts to put the blame onto any other country, Russia, Georgia, the United States, but not on the Azerbaijani government,” she said.

An international press freedom group on Friday urged Azerbaijan to find Huseinov’s killers, saying that would show that the country valued press freedoms and democracy.

Robert Menard, who heads the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, said Interior Minister Rameli Usubovi told him in a meeting Friday that the murder had a political motive, possibly to destabilize the country. He suggested foreign countries, such as Azerbaijan’s regional rival, Armenia, may have had a role.

Tension between the government and the opposition has increased since the October 2003 election, in which Aliev replaced his father, longtime leader Geidar, as president in a vote the opposition said was marred by fraud. Several opposition leaders, including newspaper editors, have been sentenced to prison over unrest that followed the election.

Speaking of which, the government has made arrests. Several of them are foreigners from Georgia, and two of them are colleagues of Huseynov’s at the Monitor publication.

Baku, 7 April: Six people suspected of murdering the editor-in-chief of Monitor magazine, Elmar Huseynov, have been detained, Lider TV quoted an unofficial source as saying today.

Some of them are Georgian citizens, the TV channel said. The detainees are Tuqay and Mehman Bayramovs, Sakir Sirinov, Nizami Ismayilov, Elsan and Farrux Mammadovs. Tuqay Bayramov is the main suspect.

Some of the suspects will be held in a remand centre for 15 days and two of them for two months. Two of the suspects are employees of Monitor magazine, the TV channel said.

The investigation is now being conducted not by the department to investigate grave crimes of the Prosecutor-General’s Office, but by the investigations department of the National Security Ministry because the murder is actually a terrorist act.

Although an employee of the operational and investigative group set up in connection with the murder did not officially confirm the aforesaid TV report in an interview with our Assa-Irada news agency correspondent, he noted some progress in the investigation.

That seems way too dubious for a government whose several top ministry officials have recently been fired for being connected with a high-profile kidnapping ring. For more information on this case, go here.