Elmar Husseynov Foundation calls for FBI help in investigating journalist's death

Azerbaijani journalists have urged local police to work closely with the American FBI to try to solve the murder of editor Elmar Husseynov, who was shot dead in Baku on 2 March 2005. The call was made during a roundtable meeting held by the Elmar Husseynov Foundation on 18 August with journalists, the general public, Husseynov's family and friends and the lawyer of former minister Farhad Aliyev, who reportedly ordered the killing. They made a joint appeal for action to President Ilham Aliyev noting that new evidence had arisen with the confessions of former police Col. Haji Mamedov, who was charged with the murder on 25 July this year and claimed former development minister Aliyev was behind it. Participants in the meeting said however that prosecutor-general Zakir Garalov and legal officials had too readily accepted Mamedov's confessions. They criticised official slowness in making an impartial enquiry into the murder.