Talk to Farid Mehralizada’s friends and colleagues, and they’ll tell you that he has a superpower: the ability to explain economics in a way that ordinary people can understand.
It was this superpower that made the young economist and Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty (RFE/ RL) journalist a sought-after commentator on talk shows and discussion panels in Azerbaijan, where he would patiently debunk one government claim after the other. It was also very likely this same superpower which led to his arrest.
On May 30, 2024, Mehralizada was violently abducted near a Baku station by unidentified men, who hooded him and delivered him to a police station.
Two days later, a Baku court placed him in pre-trial detention for “conspiring to smuggle foreign currency.” Three months later, “illegal entrepreneurship, money laundering, tax evasion and document forgery” were added to the charges.
If convicted, he could face up to 12 years in prison.
Painful memories for formerly incarcerated journalist
Mehralizada’s trial, which is expected to conclude this month, has brought back difficult memories for his RFE/ RL colleague, Alsu Kurmasheva, who spent nine months in a Russian prison after being accused first of failing to register herself under Russian President Vladimir Putin’s controversial foreign agent law, then of the much more serious charge of “spreading false information.”
“Hearing that the prosecutors wanted a 12-year sentence for Farid was very painful,” she told DW’s Inside Europe podcast. “It took me back to my sentence where the prosecutor wanted nine years’ imprisonment for me.”
Nine years, Kurmasheva points out, is longer than the average murder conviction in Russia.
“People who kill a human being get five or six years,” she says, whereas “journalists who report the truth get nine or 12 years. It’s beyond comprehension.”
Kurmasheva was released in August 2024, as part of a high-profile prisoner swap, which also included the Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich. Footage of her joyful reunion with her husband and two teenage daughters went around the world. However, she says that 10 months on, she and her family are still suffering from flashbacks.
“I will never be able to erase what has happened to us from my memory, from the memory of my children, from the memory of my husband,” she told DW. “We still feel the damage.”
In the case of Farid Mehralizada, the cost has already been steep. His wife was pregnant at the time of his arrest, and gave birth while he was in pre-trial detention.
“I’ve already missed seeing my daughter smile for the first time, laugh, and roll over,” Mehralizada wrote recently from prison. “If convicted, I will miss more precious moments than I can even imagine.”
An escalating crackdown on press and NGOs
The charges against Farid Mehralizada are typical of those levelled against journalists, NGO workers and other civil society actors in Azerbaijan’s ongoing government crackdown against dissenting voices, which the NGO Human Rights Watch extensively chronicled in a 2024 report titled: “‘We Try To Stay Invisible.’ Azerbaijan’s Escalating Crackdown on Critics and Civil Society.”
Mehralizada is standing trial alongside six other journalists ― who are all from the independent investigative outlet Abzas media. Mehralizada, however, has never worked for Abzas. His employer is Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, which was founded by the US government during the Cold War, later becoming a private corporation supervised by the United States Agency for Global Media and funded by the US Congress.
Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty journalists operate in some of the world’s most challenging media environments, at great personal risk. Usually, Washington’s advocacy in a case like Mehralizada’s would be a given. However, the organization is currently battling a funding freeze imposed by President Donald Trump, and is being kept on life support by a €5.5 million ($6.3 million) emergency allocation from the EU.
‘What am I going to say to their families?’
When Alsu Kurmasheva first heard about Donald Trump’s intention to freeze RFE/ RL funding, her first thought was for her imprisoned colleagues.
Her next thought, she says, was: “what am I going to say next time I call their families?”
However, with the substantial bipartisan support still enjoyed by RFE/ RL in Congress, together with the advocacy of press freedom groups and journalists around the world, Kurmasheva is hopeful that cases like Mehralizada’s can be kept in the spotlight.
Every time there are trade negotiations between countries, Kurmasheva says, officials shouldn’t be afraid to raise the plight of imprisoned journalists: “When the free world unites over this issue, the problem will be solved.”
It’s a conviction that might seem utopian, until you remember that Kurmasheva speaks with the authority of someone who has experienced the miracle first hand.
Several RFE/ RL journalists imprisoned
Since her release last year, Kurmasheva’s journalistic career has been on hold. Meanwhile, she has become a full-time advocate for other journalists who have not been so lucky. They include her RFE/ RL colleagues Vladyslav Yesypenko in Crimea, Nika Novak in Siberia and Ihar Losik in Belarus, as well as Mehralizada.
Kurmasheva says she is particularly alarmed for Nika Novak, because “conditions for women prisoners in Russia are horrific,” and Novak is, she has reason to believe, becoming desperate.
Ihar Losik disappeared into Belarus’ notorious detention system five years ago, and no contact has been possible since.
“He is a young journalist who is so talented,” Kurmasheva says. “He shouldn’t be there.”
Edited by: Carla Bleiker
