The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Azerbaijan to drop charges against journalists and other individuals associated with leading independent news outlet Toplum TV after prosecutors on June 8 requested prison terms of up to 16 years on charges related to receipt and use of foreign funds.

“The outrageous prison terms sought by prosecutors for nine individuals whose work was linked to Toplum TV make it crystal clear that President Ilham Aliyev’s media crackdown is about instilling a climate of fear and retaliating against bold reporting,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Azerbaijan should immediately drop the case against Toplum TV and free more than two dozen journalists and media workers wrongly held behind bars.”

The nine defendants — who include journalists, a journalist trainer, project managers, and the founders of media outlets — face multiple financial crime charges and are accused of acting as an “organized criminal group” to obtain and use Western donor funds, in violation of Azerbaijani legislation, for four closely connected organizations: Toplum TV; the nonprofit Institute for Democratic Initiatives (IDI); Fakt Yoxla, a fact-checking platform run by IDI; and Third Republic Platform, a political group.

Prosecutors requested the following sentences for the listed individuals:

Alasgar Mammadli, Toplum TV founder and media lawyer – 15 years
Mushfig Jabbar, Toplum TV video editor – 14 years
Farid Ismayilov, Toplum TV reporter – 13 years
Elmir Abbasov, Toplum TV social media manager – 13 years
Ali Zeynal, IDI journalist trainer – 15 years
Ramil Babayev, IDI project coordinator – 14 years
Ilkin Amrahov, IDI project coordinator – 14 years
Akif Gurbanov, IDI chairperson and Third Republic Platform spokesperson – 16 years
Ruslan Izzetli, Third Republic Platform co-founder – 16 years.
Police raided the offices of Toplum TV and IDI and arrested most of those listed above in March 2024. Abbasov remains free pending a verdict, but the other defendants are currently in jail. In a separate case, Toplum TV presenter Shahnaz Baylargizi is under a travel ban pending investigation on similar charges.

The accused are among dozens of journalists and right defenders arrested in a major crackdown on the press and civil society following Azerbaijan’s military recapture of the Nagorno-Karabakh region in 2023. Most of the journalists have been charged over alleged receipt of Western funding, amid a decline in relations with the West following that military campaign.

In June last year, authorities sentenced six journalists and media workers from Abzas Media, Azerbaijan’s leading anti-corruption investigative outlet, and one from U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Azerbaijani service to prison terms of between seven and a half and nine years on similar funding allegations. Twelve journalists and media workers remain on trial in a case against Germany-based Meydan TV.

Azerbaijani law requires civil society groups to obtain state approval for foreign grants and authorities say the targeted outlets failed to comply.

In rulings on similar cases, the European Court of Human Rights stressed that such an omission was punishable under Azerbaijani law by fines, not criminal sanctions. Independent experts say that authorities refuse to register independent organizations seeking foreign grants, making it impossible to legally receive the funding.

Azerbaijan was the world’s sixth-worst jailer of journalists in 2025, according to CPJ’s prison census. At present, at least 24 journalists are being held in reprisal for their work. Authorities have also heavily restricted international media and sentenced exiled journalists to lengthy prison terms in absentia.

CPJ emailed the Office of the Prosecutor-General of Azerbaijan for comment but did not immediately receive a reply.