MAHHAMAD KEKALOV
Journalist and disability rights activist; affiliated with Abzas Media; founder of “Kekalove Adaptive Fashion”; imprisoned under bogus charges.
About Mahhamad Kekalov
Mahammad Kekalov, born in 2001, is a journalist, social entrepreneur, and activist from Azerbaijan. He studied Business Administration as an undergraduate at the University of Economics in Baku. Before enrolling at the University, he graduated from the FLEX Programme in the US and the Crossroads Emerging Leaders Programme at Harvard Business School in Dubai, UAE.
Kekalov’s interests covered conflict resolution, peace-building, and different kinds of activism. He has also been the coordinator for the United Nations Youth Advisory Council in Azerbaijan and the D-18 Movement Student Resource Centre.1
In 2019, he co-founded ‘Kekalove Adaptive Fashion’. The brand created clothing for people with special needs. He became interested in adaptive fashion after seeing how difficult it was for his grandmother, who was visually impaired, to get around.2,3
Before his arrest in November 2023, Kekalov cooperated with Abzas Media, the independent media outlet founded in 2016.
Case description
In November 2023, a police raid on the Abzas Media office led to a wave of arrests. On 20 November 2023, plainclothes police officers took Kekalov from his home, the same day they arrested Abzas Media director Ulvi Hasanli. This happened shortly after Kekalov returned from the EaP CSF’s Annual Assembly in Brussels.4
For several days, his whereabouts were unknown. On 22 November 2023, the Baku City General Police Department eventually confirmed his detention. The next day, the Khatai District Court remanded Kekalov to four months of pre-trial detention on charges of conspiring to smuggle foreign currency.5
Reportedly, Kekalov was physically and mentally mistreated and tortured while in police custody to extract testimony from him.6
Kekalov’s pre-trial detention was extended several times in 2024. Later, during the court hearings, the defence pointed out many problems with the way the case was handled, including witnesses being pressured and a lack of reliable evidence.
By August 2024, the indictment was amended and the state prosecutor had added additional charges, including illegal entrepreneurship, money laundering, tax evasion, and document forgery.7
On 10 September 2024, authorities concluded the preliminary investigation in the Abzas Media case and forwarded the case to the Baku Court for Grave Crimes. In April 2025, Kekalov repudiated his earlier preliminary investigation testimony during the trial, arguing that it was coerced.8
On 20 June 2025, the court sentenced Mahammad Kekalov to seven and a half years in prison.9
References
- https://www.wise-qatar.org/biography/mahammad-kekalov/
- https://www.kekalove.com/our-story
- https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/sep/15/the-catwalk-with-a-difference-adaptive-fashion-comes-to-azerbaijan-acc
- https://www.ipd-az.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/23sept2024Eng-1.pdf
- https://oc-media.org/court-charges-abzasmedias-deputy-director-in-ongoing-crackdown/
- https://www.meydan.tv/en/article/the-abzas-media-case-during-the-investigation-i-was-forced-to-give-confessions/?tztc=1
- https://cpj.org/2024/08/azerbaijani-authorities-charge-6-abzas-media-journalists-with-7-new-offenses/
- https://www.instituteforhumanrights.org/az/team/mahammad-kekalov
- https://abzas.org/en/2025/6/mahammad-kekalov96b73d3d-9/
Resources about Mahhamad Kekalov
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