Azerbaijan has, over the past two years, tightened its grip on independent journalism and civil society to an extent that human rights observers describe as a sweeping crackdown. Behind the statistics are individual stories of prolonged detention, ill-treatment, and repression that follows people even beyond the country’s borders. Two recent cases, are an example: the transnational pursuit of journalist Afgan Sadigov across Georgia and Azerbaijan, and the mistreatment of women journalists detained in the « Meydan TV » and « Abzas Media » cases.
Between December 2024 and August 2025, Azerbaijani authorities arrested at least eleven journalists linked to the exiled outlet Meydan TV. Those detained now face trial before the Baku Grave Crimes Court on charges widely viewed as politically motivated. A parallel case involving the anti-corruption outlet Abzas Media followed a similar path: six representatives were arrested from November 2023, with sentences of up to nine years handed down in June 2025. These persecutions reflect a pattern in which the justice system itself is used to silence the outlets most active in exposing corruption and government misconduct.
In February 2026, a cell search at Baku’s Pre-Trial Detention Facility targeting three detained journalists, Aysel Umudova, Khayala Aghayeva, and Aytaj Ahmadova, escalated into what can be described as coordinated act of intimidation (link), days after the journalists had protested being held in a glass cage during a court hearing. The women reported being manually searched, physically restrained, and psychologically abused, with two sustaining injuries and one alleging a threat of sexual violence from a senior detention official. Rather than a credible investigation, the journalists were later summoned and warned to watch their public statements, while their formal complaints and requests for surveillance footage went largely unanswered.
Serious concerns arise also over the systematic denial of medical care to detained women journalists. Aytaj Ahmadova, held for roughly nineteen months, has been denied specialist care for a worsening respiratory condition. Ulviyya (Ali) Guliyeva has for months been unable to obtain authorisation for imaging tied to a pre-existing condition, including for a recent urgent issue. Nargiz Absalamova, serving an eight-year sentence in the Abzas Media case, has sought an MRI for chronic breathing difficulties for over six months without success. Taken together, these cases point to the withholding of essential care as an additional layer of pressure on defenders already deprived of their liberty.
The case of journalist Afgan Sadigov, founder of the outlet Azel.tv, shows that Azerbaijani authorities’ reach does not stop at the border. Despite binding interim measures from the European Court of Human Rights explicitly prohibiting his expulsion, Georgian authorities detained him on administrative grounds in April 2026 and expelled him within days. Back in Azerbaijan, Sadigov was again detained in June. His ordeal included a 161-day hunger strike during an earlier detention in Georgia that left him in a life-threatening condition. The European Court of Human Rights is now examining whether his transfer itself breached the European Convention on Human Rights.
These cases illustrate a wider environment in which Azerbaijan’s civic space continues to narrow, and in which cross-border cooperation between states is increasingly used to reach defenders who might otherwise find safety abroad. For ProtectDefenders.eu, they underline the need for sustained legal support and advocacy that follows defenders wherever the threats against them travel, because protection cannot stop at a border when repression does not.
