Since October, Fikret Huseynli has been trapped in Ukraine and fighting extradition to his native Azerbaijan. But on April 2, a Kyiv court ruled not to extend restrictions on his movement.
That should have been good news for the Azerbaijani opposition journalist and Dutch citizen, allowing him to finally return to his home in the Netherlands. But the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office has confiscated Huseynli’s passport and refuses to return it. Instead, the prosecutor is attempting to hold another court session and impose new restrictions on him.
And to make matters worse, the Dutch Embassy refuses to issue Huseynli another passport that would allow him to leave Ukraine.
“When I found out about the new hearing, I [ended up] in the hospital with blood pressure of 150,” he told the Kyiv Post in a message.
Extradition saga
In 2006, Huseynli was kidnapped and brutally beaten while working for the Azerbaijani opposition daily Azadlig. Two years later, he fled to the Netherlands, where he received asylum and eventually citizenship.
In October 2017, Huseynli came to Ukraine to open a branch of the independent Azerbaijani television channel Turan in Kyiv. But on Oct. 14, when attempting to leave the country, he was detained by border officers at Boryspil International Airport.
Huseynli later learned that, while he was in Kyiv, Azerbaijan had put out an Interpol red notice for him on charges of fraud and illegal border crossing. After two weeks in custody, Huseynli was released on the guarantee of lawmaker Mykola Knyazhytsky and rights activist Borys Zakharov.
However, the prosecutor confiscated Huseynli’s passport while carrying out an extradition check. That check will remain open until April 20, and could be extended further by the prosecutor’s office, says Dmytro Mazurok, a lawyer with the Right to Defense NGO who serves as the journalist’s legal counsel.
Since being freed, the Huseynli says he has been subject to harassment by agents of the Azerbaijani government. Last month, he reported that he was attacked at his rental apartment by people presenting themselves as Ukrainian police who attempted to detain him.
Rights activists fear that, even without an extradition order, Huseynli could be kidnapped and returned to Azerbaijan extrajudicially.
Almost home?
The April 2 court decision means that there are no legal restrictions preventing Huseynli from leaving Ukraine. However, after the hearing, prosecutor Serhiy Ostapets took the journalist’s passport and has refused to return it, providing no explanation for his actions.
The April 2 ruling in which a Kyiv court declined to extend measures restricting Azerbaijani journalist Fikret Huseynli’s movement, thereby allowing him to legally leave Ukraine.
Essentially, the prosecutor’s office finds itself in conflict with the court’s ruling, Mazurok says. The lawyer is convinced that the prosecutor’s decision to keep the passport is clearly a violation of the law. He can see no reason why it should be in Ukraine’s interest to detain the journalist further. As a result, Mazurok suspects this represents a case of the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office cooperating with other post-Soviet law enforcement agencies above and beyond the requirements of the law.
“It turns out that the court system shows more independence and competence than the prosecutor’s office in this situation,” he told the Kyiv Post.
On April 4, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on the prosecutor’s office to return the passport to Huseynli. “Ukraine must not succumb to the demands of Azerbaijan’s authoritarian regime, which is notorious for persecuting critics both at home and abroad,” Nina Ognianova, the CPJ program coordinator for Europe and Central Asia, said in a statement on the organization’s website.
For now, however, that outcome appears unlikely.
As a result, Mazurok says he and Huseynli have repeatedly appealed to the Dutch Embassy in Kyiv for a new passport, but to no avail.
“The position of the embassy is that it cannot get involved in national [legal] proceedings…and they don’t want to interfere in the work of Ukrainian law enforcement,” the lawyer says.
(An embassy representative declined to comment on the matter, but stated that Huseynli is receiving regular consular services.)
Now, the journalist awaits his next hearing on April 12, where the prosecutor will again request that restrictive measures be placed on Huseynli to prevent him from leaving Ukraine.
Meanwhile, “our law enforcement will continue to violate the rights of a Dutch citizen,” Mazurok says.
