Erling Borgen’s film about Eynulla Fatullayev premiered

Embassy of Finland in Vilnius has hosted the presentation of the film by Norwegian filmmaker Erling Borgen about jailed Azerbaijani journalist Eynulla Fatullayev.

The event was attended by human right defenders from Belarus, England, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden, Turan agency reported. The 28-minute film features the situation around media in Azerbaijan and in particular around imprisoned Eynullah Fatullayev, Azerbaijan's most prominent investigative editor and journalist.

Erling Borgen earlier made a film about Elmar Huseynov, chief editor of Monitor weekly, an Azerbaijani journalist, who was killed in 2005.

The filmmaker traveled to Azerbaijan this year, in May, to make recordings for a documentary about Eynullah Fatullayev. He was detained at the airport in Baku where the materials were seized. Among the items missing from the luggage were hard disks, memory sticks containing all of the sources of information, copies of video footage and photos, as well as documents containing background information for Eynullah Fatullayev’s case. The incident happened at the Heydar Aliyev International Airport when Borgen and his colleague were leaving for Oslo. Fortunately, all the copies were sent to Oslo long before the departure, as there were concerns about possible provocations, Turan agency said.

Eynulla Fatullayev, founder and chief editor of the now-closed Realny Azerbaijan and Gundelik Azarbaycan newspapers, was arrested on April 20 2007 and was sentenced to eight and a half years on charges of defamation, terrorism, incitement of ethnic hatred and tax evasion. After his covering stories related to issue of Khojaly in which he said that Armenians didn’t kill residents of the village, he was charged of incitement of ethnic hatred and terrorism.

The persecution of Fatullayev also began after he wrote an article marking the second anniversary of the March 2005 murder of his former editor and mentor Elmar Huseynov. The piece, published in Realny Azerbaijan and headlined “Lead and Roses,” accused Azerbaijani authorities of deliberately obstructing the investigation into Huseynov’s killing.

The Supreme Court of Azerbaijan denied Fatullayev’s appeal in June 2008, ending domestic legal avenues. Fatullayev appealed to the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, which began reviewing the case in September 2008.

In a ruling issued on 22 April, the European Court not only ordered Azerbaijan to free Fatullayev at once but also to pay him 25,000 euros in compensation.

Numerous international organisations backed the Court’s ruling and demanded to free Fatullayev. They called for Azerbaijani authorities to meet European Court’s decision. However, authorities of Azerbaijan filed an appeal in a bid to protest the ruling.