Silk Way Airline once linked to Azerbaijan’s ruling family got US loan guarantees, military contracts, planes

Konstantin Meydan TV, News

Through opaque contracts, an Azerbaijani cargo airline once linked to the ruling Aliyev family has an impressive range of business partners — including the US military.

A cargo airline owned by a company with past ties to Azerbaijan’s ruling Aliyev family won some lucrative contracts from the U.S. military, according to documents obtained in 2016 through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed in the U.S. by a reporter for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

In late 2005, as the war in Afghanistan was in its fourth year, the U.S. government began contracting with the carrier, Silk Way Airlines, to transport ammunition and other non-lethal materials to U.S.-trained Afghan forces and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the country.

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Speculations swirl around closure of pro-government Azerbaijani news agency

Konstantin News, Re-Post

The Azerbaijani authorities have pulled the plug on the news agency APA, an indication that even reliably pro-government media are not safe in the ongoing crackdown on press in the country.

APA, as well as its sister agencies Lent.az and APA Sport in the company APA Holding, were all shut down on August 1. The authorities did not provide any explanation, but media observers in the country suggest that there could be internal business struggles behind the move.

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Turkey Makes Overtures to Minorities, but Old Enmities Linger

Konstantin News, Re-Post

KARS, Turkey — The history of this city, about 30 miles from the border with Armenia, may best be told through its former Armenian cathedral, the Church of the Holy Apostles, poised at the base of an imposing fortress.

Built in the 10th century by an Armenian king, it was turned into a mosque three times and once into a Russian Orthodox church. It was briefly resurrected as an Armenian church in 1919 before the modern secular Turkish state expropriated it in 1921, eventually turning it into a petroleum depot, then into a museum, then again into a mosque.

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No free speech for ethnic minority

Konstantin Meydan TV, News

My husband was imprisoned in February 2007. Two weeks later, they stormed into our house at midnight to scare us and told us that he had betrayed his nation.

This is how Maryam Mammadova remembers what happened to her late husband, Professor Novruzali Mammadov.

Novruzali Mammadov was arrested by the now defunct National Security Ministry on 2 February 2007. He died in suspicious circumstances on 17 August 2009 in a Baku prison. At the time of his arrest, he was the head of the scientific-educational sector of the Romance and Germanic Linguistics Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, the editor-in-chief of the “Tolyshi Sado” newspaper, and the deputy chairman of the Talysh Cultural Center. Many, including his wife, believe that he was imprisoned and killed for promoting Talysh culture and especially because of his activities connected with “Tolyshi Sado.”

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Azerbaijan: A River Of Illegal Drugs Runs Through It

Konstantin Meydan TV, News

This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

For 77-year-old Safura Ahmedova, living in Azerbaijan along one of the globe’s most notorious drug-trade routes has come at immense cost: two sons and a husband dead, and another son in prison.

“My elder son was married and had a good job. He later became a drug addict,” Ahmedova tells RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service. “We struggled to cure him, but it didn’t help. He shot up, poisoning his body, and died. He left behind two children.”

But the drugs that have overrun Ahmedova’s home district of Astara, which borders Iran and the Caspian Sea and makes up Azerbaijan’s southernmost corner, were not done destroying her life and family.

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Armenia will strike back harder if Baku resumes military attacks

Konstantin News

Armenia’s Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan warned Baku that Armenia will strike back harder in the event of an Azerbaijani attack similar to what he called the April 2016 “aggression” against Artsakh.

Speaking to the Russian EADaily Tonoyan warned that in an event of an attack by Azerbaijan, Armenia cannot be in the position to solicit peace and will use its capabilities to retaliate.

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State Department Exposes Azerbaijan’s False Image of ‘Religious Tolerance’

Konstantin News

The government of Azerbaijan spends a large fortune each year to convince the world that Azerbaijan is  a tolerant nation, which respect the human rights of all minorities living in the country.

However, no matter how many fake ecumenical services Azerbaijan’s lobbyists in Europe and the United States organize by bribing Christian and Jewish leaders, the truth about Azeri intolerance is impossible to cover up.

Azerbaijan’s 10 million population is 96 percent Muslim, of which approximately 65 percent is Shia and 35 percent Sunni. Between 15,000 and 20,000 Jews live in Baku, while there are hardly any Armenians left after they were massacred or deported during the Artsakh war.

The U.S. State Department’s latest annual report (2017) on International Religious Freedom around the world indicates that Azerbaijan discriminates against certain religious groups, even though its laws prohibit the government from interfering in their activities.

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US Lobbying Firm Launders Azerbaijan’s Reputation — And Gets ‘Laundromat’ Cash

Konstantin News

This article was originally published by OCCRP

Some of the money that passed through the Azerbaijani Laundromat, a secret money laundering scheme and slush fund that saw €2.5 billion (US$ 2.9 billion) flow out of the country between 2012 and 2014, ended up in the hands of a purportedly private Azerbaijani organization that hired a Virginia firm to lobby the US government for more than a decade.

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has earlier reported that other monies from the fund were used to advance the Azerbaijani government’s political agenda, with some ending up in bank accounts belonging to European politicians who spoke highly of President Ilham Aliyev’s regime even as it arrested journalists and political activists. The precise origins of the funds are unknown, hidden behind secretive shell companies. But there is ample evidence that the authoritarian country’s ruling elite is behind them.

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«Others will continue this fight»

Konstantin Meydan TV, News

One year after the arrest of Afgan Mukhtarli

“Mum, you said that daddy went very far away. We have also gone very far away now. Why can’t we see him now? I want to see my daddy!”

These are the words of Afgan Mukhtarli’s 4-year old daughter Nuray. She and her mother are currently living in Germany. Until Mukhtarli’s abduction last year, the family had been residing in Georgia.

One year ago, on 29 May 2017, the investigative journalist disappeared from the streets of Tbilisi and resurfaced the next day in custody in Azerbaijan. A statement issued by authorities said a criminal case would be launched against him because he had illegally crossed the border, assaulted a border official and smuggled 10,000 euro into the country.

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Azerbaijan again deported citizen of Russia because of armenian last name.

Konstantin News

Azerbaijan denied entry for Russian citizen with armenian last name. 81 years old Olga Barsegyan was born in Leningrad, survived the blockade and is a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, was deported from International airport of Baku. Of course the reason for deportation does not state it was the armenian origin. You can check official scan of deportation document – “other reasons“. That what they call it!

Officially Baku does not confirm the undesirability of entry to the territory of Azerbaijan to persons of Armenian origin, but such practice exists. And this was not the first time and I think not the last.

In 2013, a Russian journalist, Anna Sahakyan was not allowed to enter Azerbaijan, later being even declared a persona non grata for her Armenian family name.

In May 2016, an 8-year-old child with an Armenian surname was denied entry to Azerbaijan at Baku’s Heydar Aliyev international airport.

A Russian citizen, M. V. Uyeldanov (Galustyan) was detained in Azerbaijan over his Armenian origin in July 2016.

An Estonian citizen of Armenian origin was held at the airport in the Azerbaijani capital city of Baku for 12 hours and sent back to Estonia in late March.

The border service and Azerbaijani carriers, as a rule, explain the deportation or refusal to admit safety considerations to the board.

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