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By Vugar Gojayev

BAKU. March 2, 2009: On this day, four years ago, the Editor of the journal “Monitor”, Elmar Huseynov was brutally killed. The murder of the highly popular Azerbaijani investigative journalist Elmar Huseynov remains unsolved four years after the tragic act, and few Azeris believe the case will ever be solved. The assassination of Azerbaijan's best-known critical journalist was the most brutal of the attacks against Azerbaijan’s media.

The 38-year old Elmar Huseynov, founder and editor of the prominent and independent weekly magazine “Monitor”, was shot seven times by a silencer pistol and killed on the threshold of his apartment in Baku on 2 March 2005. Independent experts believe the crime bears the signs of a contract killing.
Huseynov’s colleagues and many observers believe that the independence and the political content of “Monitor” were the reasons for the killing.

The authorities had constantly harassed Huseynov since “Monitor” was set up in 1996. 34 legal steps were taken against Huseynov, ranging from imprisonment to heavy fines, and dozens of threats aimed at stopping his investigative journalism that relentlessly sought to expose corrupt officials. Huseynov, a critic of both the political opposition and the incumbent regime, had written countless articles revealing corruption and power abuse, often involving members of the government and close relatives of the president directly.

Azeri government, which has long record of stifling at freedom of expression, did every attempt to dispel any doubts that the government was standing behind or somehow connected to this vicious crime. Under President Ilham Aliyev’s direct supervision the general prosecutor’s office started initial investigations, but it was later transferred to the Ministry of National Security.

President Aliyev vowed the murder “would be solved within 40 days” and ordered a speedy resolution of the murder case.

Intentionally slow investigation?
Today, four years have passed since the President’s pledge, yet the official investigation remains shadowed and appears stopped.

Elmar’s colleagues, Azeri human rights defenders and opposition groups centre their suspicions on the government and call the assassination an act of state terror against government critics. “The government deliberately delays the investigation and is far away from taking serious action”, says Shahbaz Khuduoglu, a member of the Public Investigation Committee, a group of close friends of Huseynov to monitor the state investigation.

“None of the crimes against journalists, including that of Elmar’s, will ever be fairly investigated under this government”, opposition leader Eldar Namazov told the Norwegian Helsinki Committee.

Sabir Huseynov, father of the slain journalist’s father does not trust the state investigation. “What investigation are we talking about when there is no political will to tackle this case? This is a politically motivated terror act to silence brave people, like my son”.

Huseynov’s widow Rushania, with little son, is now a political migrant in Norway and struggling for finding the truth behind the murder of her husband. Mrs. Huseynova says she is weary of hearing same responses since 2005 from the authorities when asked of investigation. “They keep telling that the investigation is underway. What they have found so far is just to confuse the public”.

The authorities’ war against media
There is a growing environment of state hostility toward independent and opposition media and that raises serious concern about the security of independent journalists in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan was recently the only country with high number of journalist in jail among the 56 OSCE member countries.
At least half of the journalists imprisoned in Azerbaijan in the past two years were convicted on charges of criminal libel or defamation. As the country has heavy corruption records, the investigative journalism to expose corruption cases is always hampered by the authorities. Therefore, when the journalists deeper dig all these corruption cases, the higher they face chances to end up in court for publishing defamatory articles.
The Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has included the Azerbaijani leader on its list of so-called "Media Predators." The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), listed Azerbaijan among the world’s top 10 worst countries for press freedom in 2007.

Berit Lindeman of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee underscores the evident impunity on attacks against journalists. “There is no single recorded case where vicious physical assaults against journalists have been fairly investigated by the authorities”.

Apart from the physical harm, the politically motivated arrests against journalists have also been on dramatic rise. When satirist and government critic Mirza Sakit of opposition Azadliq newspaper was sentenced to 3 years in jail on alleged ‘selling and using heroin’, human rights and media activists found the charge a “politically motivated and fabricated act”.

The paper’s chief-editor and well-known government critic, Ganimat Zahid, is also in jail for alleged hooliganism.

Eynulla Fatullayev, the founder of the largest circulated Realniy Azerbaijan and Gundelik Azerbaijan dailies, was imprisoned in 2007 April for “insulting the Azerbaijani people” and “inciting religious and ethnic hatred and terrorism offences”. In a statement, the English PEN stated that, “[Fatullayev] is imprisoned in direct denial of his right to freedom of expression”.

“It is an irrefutable fact that all the victims in almost all the attacks and arrests are closely linked to opposition and independent media,” says Lindeman. “It clearly suggests a political context to these cases. On this day when we honour Elmar Huseynovs memory, let us also remember the journalists in prison in Azerbaijan today. It is also time to see the release of these prisoners, convicted for their journalistic work.”