The chief editors of Sputnik Azerbaijan have been placed into pre-trial detention for four months

A Baku court on Tuesday ordered the pre-trial detention of Igor Kartavykh, head of Sputnik Azerbaijan’s editorial office, and Editor-in-Chief Evgeny Belousov for four months.

The Russian journalists were arrested a day before during a police raid on the Russian news agency’s office in the Azerbaijani capital. The country’s authorities claimed the agency has been operating “through illegal financing,” while Sputnik dismissed the allegations as “absurd.”

During the raid, Azerbaijani police also detained an editor with the Russian video news agency Ruptly, who was filming outside Sputnik’s office. 

According to Azerbaijani media, a total of seven suspects have been detained in the case involving the Russian journalists. However, only the senior editors ended up in pre-trial custody. The case reportedly involves multiple offenses, including fraud, illegal business dealings and money laundering.

Shortly after the raid on the Sputnik office, Russia’s Foreign Ministry summoned Azerbaijani Ambassador Rakhman Mustafaev, citing “Baku’s hostile actions and the unlawful detention of Russian journalists.”

In February, Baku had moved to effectively halt Sputnik’s operations, giving accreditation to just a single journalist. The outlet, however, told RT that it had never received a formal prohibition, and the foreign ministers of the two countries have been discussing issues related to the agency’s work.

 

READ MORE: Moscow responds to arrest of Russian journalists in Azerbaijan

The hostile move against the Russian news agency comes amid a new flare-up in relations between Moscow and Baku. The tensions were sparked by a police raid on a suspected ethnic organized crime group in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, composed of Russian nationals of Azerbaijani origin.

The raid came as a part of an investigation into a string of murders, dating back to the early 2000s, believed to be gang assassinations committed by members of the crime ring. Two elderly suspects died during the police operation, with the preliminary assessment indicating that at least one of them suffered heart failure.

The incident sparked outrage among Azerbaijani politicians and public figures, who demanded retaliation against Russia and accused it of targeting the suspected crime ring based on the ethnicity of its members.

Earlier on Tuesday, Baku officially accused Russian law enforcement of deliberately killing the detainees, claiming both of them succumbed to blunt force trauma.