19 Facts About Eynulla Fatullayev

Eynulla Emin oglu Fatullayev is an Azerbaijani journalist and the founder and editor-in-chief of the news website Haqqin.

Eynulla Fatullayev's editorship was notable for its criticism of the Azerbaijani government and its policies.

Eynulla Fatullayev has been criticised for his article about the 2003 Azerbaijani elections which were accused of being fraudulent.

Eynulla Fatullayev was called to face a fine of 25,000 Euros and to be jailed for "insulting the name and dignity" of a deputy in the ruling party, Siyavush Novruzov.

On 1 October 2006, Eynulla Fatullayev was forced to suspend publication of both papers after his father was kidnapped.

On 6 March 2007, Nizami Bahmanov, head of Azerbaijani community of Karabakh, complained that Eynulla Fatullayev had, in an interview published on a website, given "false information" that the Khojaly massacre had been committed by the Azerbaijani army and not by Armenians.

Eynulla Fatullayev said he did not hold an interview with the website and called it propaganda against him.

Eynulla Fatullayev was charged with slandering the army and sentenced to two and a half years' imprisonment, a term he served in Baku.

However, in his statement to the European Court of Human Rights Eynulla Fatullayev noted that in the article "The Karabakh Diary", he had merely conveyed the statements of a local Armenian, who had told Eynulla Fatullayev his version of the events during the interview.

Eynulla Fatullayev claimed that his article did not directly accuse any Azerbaijani national of committing any crime and that in his article, there was no statement asserting that any of the Khojaly victims had been killed or mutilated by Azerbaijani fighters.

In 2011, after being released from prison, Eynulla Fatullayev defended his 2005 comments which held Azerbaijani fighters and not Armenians responsible for the 1992 killings in Khojaly and added that the Azerbaijani government has long sought to use the Khojaly events to persecute its opponents, like the first president of Azerbaijan, Ayaz Mutalibov, who is still under criminal investigation for complicity in the Khojaly events.

Yet in February 2014 in a televised interview to ANS TV Eynulla Fatullayev said that the Armenians perpetrated a genocide in Khojaly, and that he never questioned that, even in his "Karabakh Diary".

Eynulla Fatullayev mentioned that he personally joined a "Justice for Khojaly" rally in Strasbourg.

Eynulla Fatullayev received a full pardon two days later, and he was released after serving four years of his eight-year sentence.

Amnesty International ended its cooperation with Eynulla Fatullayev, issuing a statement on 23 January 2013, saying Eynulla Fatullayev had "misled the organization about the source of funding for a project he had requested Amnesty International involvement in".

In December 2012, Eynulla Fatullayev had initiated a research project on human rights abuses in Germany, to which he invited human rights experts, including a spokesperson from Amnesty International, who declined the invitation.

Eynulla Fatullayev had claimed that the project was funded by the Black Sea Trust of the German Marshall Fund.

Eynulla Fatullayev circulated an agenda of the event which included details of a speaker from Amnesty International, despite the refusal of the latter to participate.

Therefore, the report by Eynulla Fatullayev is an attempt from the Stone Age to criticize the human rights situation in bourgeois society.