Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Azerbaijani Journalists Being Prosecuted (and Being Targeted With an Iranian
Ayatollah's Fatwa)
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_01_14-2007_01_20.shtml#1169146842
for Publishing Article Critical of Islam and (Possibly) Mohammed: An
article by the [1]Committee to Protect Journalists, on the Today.Az
site reports,
Editor-in-Chief Samir Sadagatoglu and reporter Rafiq Tagi of the
independent newspaper Senet were arrested on November 15, after
publishing an article that alleged Islam's influence was hindering
Azerbaijan's economic and political development. The Nasimi
District Court initially ordered that Sadagatoglu and Tagi be kept
in pretrial detention for two months with a trial expected to begin
in mid-January, according to international press reports.
But on Thursday, Nasimi District Court Judge Gulnar Tagizade
extended the pretrial detention for another two months, according
to CPJ sources and local press reports....
The journalists are charged with inciting national, ethnic, or
religious hatred under Article 283 of the penal code, which could
bring up to five years in prison upon conviction, according to
international press reports.
Tagi's article provoked outrage among hard-line Islamists in
Azerbaijan and Iran, who called for the journalists to be executed,
according to local press reports. Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Fazel
Lankarani, one of Iran's most senior clerics, issued a fatwa
calling for the deaths of the two journalists. After the article
was published, Tagi and his family were placed under police
protection, according to local press reports....
An [2]International Herald Tribune last month reported similarly on
earlier phases of the story (so did the New York Times, but that story
is now behind a pay wall). According to the Tribune story, "The
article blamed Islam for Azerbaijan's meager development and likened
the Prophet Muhammad to a used handkerchief," but other news sources
also cast doubt on whether the article in fact insulted Mohammed, or
just blamed Islam for Azerbaijan's backwardness.
The Chairman of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan has demanded that the
law "punish these provocateurs severely" (full interview available
[3]here; it seems to be the same text as what I found in the BBC
Monitoring Trans Caucucus file on NEXIS). The Iranian ayatollah's
death sentence is
href="http://www.lankarani.org/eng/index.html?rnd=10611319151";>availab
le in English on the cleric's own site
. The ayatollah is the same one who responded to the Pope's recent
quotes of criticisms of Islam by saying that "We can easily prove for
[the Pope] that Islam is the religion of peace and mercy." Okay then.
Can anyone, by the way, point me to a copy of the article, apparently
titled Europe and We and published in the Sanat newspaper? I'd
naturally prefer it in English or Russian, but if I get an Azeri copy
I should be able to get it translated.
References
1. http://www.today.az/news/society/34914.html
2. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/22/news/azeri.php
3. http://www.armeniandiaspora.com/archive/74917.html
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