Azerbaijan: prominent journalist released following a suspended sentence

Prominent Azeri journalist Rauf Mirkadyrov has today been released following a suspended sentence of five years handed down by the appeals court in the capital, Baku. The International and the European Federations of Journalists, (IFJ) and (EFJ), while welcoming this development, insist on the full acquittal of the journalist, who has been in jail since April 2014 and accused of high treason for spying for Armenia. The political correspondent in Turkey for the independent Russian-language newspaper Zerkalo (Mirror), Rauf Mirkadyrov, has today received a suspended sentence of five years after the court threw out the initial six-year jail conviction, his…