Saturday, May 20, 2006

Media: A reporters lot is not a happy one in Azerbaijan

It's a tough job being a reporter in Azerbaijan. The latest in a series of attacks upon reporters has resulted in the editor of an opposition newspaper being abducted and severely beaten.

The head of the opposition Popular Front, Ali Kerimli, said that Bahaddin Khaziyev, editor of the Bizim Yol (Our Way) newspaper, was seized late Thursday in the capital, Baku, by five men who put a bag over his head and drove him to a lake outside the city.

Khaziyev, who is also the deputy leader of the Popular Front, recounted that one of his assailants called someone on a cell phone to say: "We did everything you asked," Kerimli said.