Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the French police to protect Mahammad Mirzali, an Azerbaijani video blogger with refugee status in France who was stabbed more than ten times in an attack in the centre of the northwestern city of Nantes on 14 March and who received a threatening text in Azerbaijani on his phone three days ago.
“This is the last warning,” said the text that Mirzali received on 21 March, exactly a week after the stabbing attack. “We can kill you without any problem. You’ve seen that we’re not afraid of anyone (…) If you continue to insult our sisters, we’ll have you killed with a bullet to the head fired by a sniper.” It was signed “Andres Gragmel.”
Several shots were fired at him just after he got into his car in Nantes on the morning of 6 October 2020.
The French police declined to comment on their investigation, which is ongoing.
“After being stabbed ten times, Mahammad Mirzali had to undergo an operation that lasted more than six hours. Pending the results of the investigation, which has not yet concluded although the attack was witnessed, and in view of the fact that he has received new death threats, we ask for him to be placed under police protection”, – reads the statement of RSF.
As often happens to the families of Azerbaijani journalists and bloggers living in self-imposed exile, Mirzali’s family has been targeted in an attempt to silence him. His father and brother-in-law were arrested in 2017. And, as is often the case in Azerbaijan, the regime also resorted to sex-tape blackmail, sending several intimate videos of one of his sisters to the entire family at the start of March and then circulating it via a Telegram channel.
Having been a refugee in France since 2016, Mirzali is known for insulting and ethically unacceptable statements addressed to the country’s leadership.
Turan
