Azerbaijan Jails Opposition Journalist for Eight Years

A court in Azerbaijan on Thursday sentenced a prominent opposition journalist to eight years in prison on charges his lawyer dismissed as trumped up and politically motivated.

Perviz Hashimli -- a reporter at opposition newspaper Bizim Yol –- "was sentenced to eight years in prison on trumped-up charges of illegal possession and trafficking of weapons," his lawyer Elchin Sadykhov told Agence France Presse.

"My client says he was tortured during pre-trial detention," Sadykhov said. "He is innocent and we will appeal the politically motivated verdict."

Hashimli -- who also runs a critical website and is a senior member of the opposition Azerbaijani Popular Front party -- was arrested last September ahead of presidential polls that saw strongman President Ilham Aliyev re-elected for a third consecutive term.

Critical journalists in the tightly controlled ex-Soviet state say that they routinely face harassment and persecution by the authorities.

The government has consistently rejected accusations that free speech is limited by restrictive legislation, official censorship, punitive prosecutions and assaults on journalists.

But rights groups say the government has been clamping down on opponents since Aliyev's re-election last year.

Human Rights Watch has accused the government of regularly using "bogus" drugs and weapons accusations to stifle dissent. 

Aliyev, 51, secured a third term in October polls seen as flawed by international observers, extending his family's decades-long grip on power in the oil-rich Caspian Sea nation.

He took power in 2003 following a disputed election after the death of his father Heydar Aliyev, a former KGB officer and Communist-era leader.