Azerbaijan: Rafiq Tagi pardonned
Published: January 4, 2008
English PEN Honorary Member Rafiq Tagi, editor of Senet newspaper, was among five journalists pardonned by the Azerbaijani President on 28 December 2007.
Tagi has since been released and told the Institute for Reporters Freedom and Safety (IRFS) that he considered his period of imprisonment as a dream. The article for which he was imprisoned expressed, he insisted, "the philosophical position of the author. This is not a crime." Tagi's colleague Samir Sadagatoglu was similarly pardonned.
Other Azeri journalists, however, such as Eynulla Fatullayev, who is serving a sentence of up to 30 months in prison after conviction for insult and libel, did not receive pardons. English PEN continues to protest their detention.