The Khatai District Court in Azerbaijan held a trial on Sunday of the six journalists detained the previous day in Baku on smuggling charges. Five of the six reporters, Natig Javadli, Khayala Aghayeva, Aytaj Tapdig, Aynur Elgunesh and Aysel Umudova, work with the Berlin-based independent media outlet Meydan TV. The sixth, Ramin Jabrayilzade, is an independent journalist. The Azerbaijani interior ministry justified the arrest in a statement to a pro-government news outlet, accusing them of illegally importing foreign currency.

Meydan TV refuted all accusations in a statement and detailed that the reporters’ homes were searched and some of their belongings seized. The outlet, whose website has been officially banned within the country since 2017, restated it has been repeatedly subject to surveillance and cyber-attacks in recent years, but was able to continue its independent work free of censorship.

Gulnoza Said, a program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) demanded the journalists’ immediate release, “along with more than a dozen other leading journalists arrested on retaliatory charges in recent months”. According to Said, their detention as part of a wider crackdown on journalists is a “slap in the face” of UN and democratic governments who negotiated with Azerbaijani officials at the UN COP29 climate conference.

Ahead of and after the COP29 conference hosted in Baku, several prominent government critics, journalists, and human rights activists had been locked up under politically motivated charges or forced into exile. Azerbaijan frequently detains journalists, accusing them of receiving Western donor funds. The state is currently facing criticism for a longstanding pattern of arrest and detention, contributing to its dire human rights record.