CPJ calls on Azerbaijan to investigate confiscation of reporting

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on Azerbaijani authorities to immediately investigate the illegal confiscation of footage and reporting from Norwegian television reporter Erling Borgen and cameraman Dag Inge Dahl on Thursday, said on the committee’s web-site.

Norwegian journalist and filmmaker Erling Borgen and cameraman Dag Inge Dahl recently visited Azerbaijan to produce a documentary on freedom of expression under the authoritarian President Ilham Aliyev.

The two journalists spent six days in Baku interviewing a variety of reporters, human rights and press freedom defenders, and relatives of the imprisoned journalist Eynulla Fatullayev, Borgen told CPJ. They also attended a hearing in the new, drug-related case against Fatullayev. However, much of the material the two journalists filmed and collected in Azerbaijan, mostly focused on the case of Fatullayev, was confiscated from Borgen by unknown persons shortly after he checked in at the Baku airport for his flight back to Oslo early on the morning of May 6.

It’s worth mentioning that the alarming deterioration in the press freedom situation in Azerbaijan became a reason for adding Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliev to a list of Predators of Press Freedom by Reporters without Borders.