ANAR ABDULLA
former associate of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center (EMDS), arrested under the spurious charges.
About Anar Abdulla
Anar Abdulla, who is also known as Abdullayev, is a freelance journalist and activist in Azerbaijan.
He was born on 28 October 1989. He started his civic activism as early as 2012, when he joined the civil movement NIDA, which organised protests, especially against non-combat deaths in the army.
In 2018, he started working with the news site gozetci.az and other publications.
At the same time, he joined the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center (EMDS), which is run by human rights activist Anar Mammadli.
He was active on social media. Abdulla was briefly detained several times before 2021 while performing his professional duties, specifically while filming various rallies.
His first reported administrative arrest occurred on 27 May 2016, when, as a civil movement N!DA member and reporter, Abdulla was placed under a 10-day administrative arrest on charges of resisting a police officer.
His lawyer filed a complaint on his behalf with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The second major State-led persecution incident took place on 5 October 2021.
Abdulla, then working as a reporter, was summoned to the 18th Police Station of the Narimanov District Police Department for a ‘preventive discussion’ regarding his comments on social media sites related to the political situation in Azerbaijan.
Police claimed that he orally insulted officers and, when they tried to calm him, he resisted and pushed them.
On 6 October 2021, the Narimanov District Court of Baku City sentenced him to a 15-day administrative arrest on charges of disorderly conduct and failure to obey the legitimate demands of a policeman.1,2
Case description
On 8 April 2025, the Baku Main Police Department summoned and charged him as a suspect in a broader criminal case filed against his associate, human rights defender Anar Mammadli. Following the arrest, investigative authorities charged Abdulla with illegal entrepreneurship (Criminal Code Article 192), false entrepreneurship (Criminal Code Article 193-1), smuggling committed by a group of persons acting in collusion (Criminal Code Article 206.3.2), evasion of payment of taxes/social contributions (Criminal Code Article 213), and forging official documents (Criminal Code Article 320). Initially, he was released under police supervision, which required him to report regularly to the authorities.
However, on 4 August 2025, at a trial in the Baku Court of Grave Crimes, the prosecutor motioned for pre-trial detention, claiming that Abdulla failed to comply with the police supervision regime, specifically by ‘failing to check in on time’.
Despite the defence countering that Abdulla had received no warnings and that his registration was in a different district, the court granted the prosecutor’s motion and remanded him. On 11 July 2025, while under police supervision for the criminal case, Abdulla was placed under a 30-day administrative arrest on charges of petty hooliganism and disobeying police orders, which his associates suggested was done to pressure him to incriminate himself in the main criminal case.3,4,5,6
References
- https://www.ipd-az.org/the-court-violated-the-fundamental-rights-of-anar-abdullayev/
- https://oc-media.org/azerbaijani-journalist-given-15-day-sentence-following-critical-facebook-post/00000000
- https://www.irfs.org/news-feed/journalist-anar-abdulla-became-a-defendant-in-the-case-of-human-rights-activist-mammadli/
- https://www.meydan.tv/ru/article/vydvinuto-obvinenie-eshhe-odnomu-zhurnalistu-v-azerbajdzhane/
- https://www.eng.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/67021
- https://m.kavkaz-uzel.media/articles/412978
Resources about Anar Abdulla
All of the Campaign’s resources are created under Creative Commons License under CC0 conditions, meaning these resources are public dedication tools, with no copyright, put into the worldwide public domain.
Download blue background poster (PNG)
Download square picture (PNG)
EN 
AZ