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Magazine editor killed in Azerbaijan

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  • Magazine editor killed in Azerbaijan

    Associated Press
    March 2 2005

    Magazine editor killed in Azerbaijan
    3/2/2005, 3:51 p.m. CT
    The Associated Press

    BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) - The editor of a magazine critical of
    Azerbaijan's government was shot and killed Wednesday in the lobby of
    his apartment building, police and colleagues said.

    Seven shots were fired and four struck Elmar Huseinov, founder and
    editor of the opposition magazine Monitor, police at the scene in
    Baku, the capital, told journalists.

    Tension between the government and the opposition in tightly
    controlled Azerbaijan has increased since the October 2003 election
    in which Ilham Aliev replaced his father, longtime leader Geidar
    Aliev, as president in a vote the opposition called fraudulent.

    Several opposition leaders, including newspaper editors, have been
    sentenced to prison over unrest that followed the election.

    Monitor has been published and sold privately since a decision
    forbidding the state printing and distribution company from selling
    it.

    It was ordered closed twice. After the first order, in 1998, it
    continued publishing under a slighly different name. It shut after
    the second order, in 2002, but renewed publication after a change in
    media licensing legislation the same year.

    Huseinov served six months in prison in 2001-2002 after a successful
    libel suit by the mayor of Baku.

    Last November a court ordered his property confiscated to pay $20,000
    fine connected with a 2003 suit by the representative of Azerbaijan's
    Nakhichevan enclave over an article titled "The Godfather."

    Nakhichevan, which is on the Iranian border, lies entirely within the
    neighbouring state of Armenia. It has an area of 2,124 sq miles with
    a population of 333,200. The magazine article compared Nakhichevan
    residents to Sicilians. Huseinov did not have enough property to
    cover the fine.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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