Adnan Hajizade, a video blogger and member of the “OL!” opposition movement, was arrested along with youth activist Emin Milli at a cafe in Baku on July 8, after they were beaten up by two men, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said.<\/p>\n
The pair were remanded in custody by a judge for two months, RSF said.<\/p>\n
The incident came ahead of Monday’s visit to Britain by Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, who is expected to meet government and BP officials.<\/p>\n
Hadjizade suffered a broken nose in the attack and Milli sustained a leg and other injuries, RSF said.<\/p>\n
Hadjiazde, 26, has worked for BP’s public relations team in Baku for several years. A spokesman for BP — one of the biggest foreign investors in Azerbaijan — said the company was making representations to the authorities.<\/p>\n
“This is something BP is very concerned about and is taking very seriously,” a spokesman said.<\/p>\n
Critics accuse Aliyev of adopting an increasingly authoritarian style including, in recent months, a plan to place curbs on non-governmental organizations.<\/p>\n
Rights groups and Aliyev’s opponents accuse the West of muting its criticism on human rights because Azerbaijan is a supplier of oil and gas to the West in the strategically important South Caucasus.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Tom Bergin; Editing by Jon Boyle)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON (Reuters) – An opposition blogger in Azerbaijan has been remanded in custody pending trial on hooliganism charges, prompting protests from his employer, oil major BP Plc, a media rights group said on its website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}