Rauf Arifoghlu: "Akif Naghi must be brought to criminal responsibility for his actions"

- What can you say about beating of Yeni Musavat newspaper correspondent Zamin Hajili by chairman of the Organization for Karabakh Liberation Akif Naghi?

- I condemn Naghi's actions and assess them as a terror against an independent journalist.

It seems to be an earlier planned crime: Akif Naghi first made an appointment with Zamin Hajili near the office of the Yeni Musavat newspaper and then started to bear our journalist with his "group of support".

Believe me, the implications of the said incident could have been more serious. In particular, I do not exclude that everything would end in stabbing of Hajili.

Therefore, I think Akif Naghi must be brought to responsbility for the crime. We will insist on it.

- Do you think Akif Naghi acted by his own initiative or fulfilled someone's order?

- Frankly speaking, I can not now find the answer to this question. I would the following: the journalist activity and the articles of Zamin Hajili are still causing resentment of many people, whose actions he fairly criticized and analyzed. These people would be glad to punish Zamin Hajili. I do not know whether they have made the order or he acted by his own initiative.

Anyway, Naghi's actions were silly and can not be justified.

- The Yeni Musavat newspaper, like other opposition medias earlier paid much attention to the activity of Akif Naghi and the Organization for Karabakh Liberation, thus promoting his certain popularity in the society. Don't you feel regret that you have ensured his PR?

- We have published materials about the activity of the Organization for Karabakh Liberation headed by Naghi to draw attention of the public to very important problems, facing Azerbaijan for our readers to be able to get a comprehensive information about the views and approaches to the ways of their settlement. In other words, we were observing the pluralism of views.

Unfortunately, the work of a journalist has a back side not only in Azerbaijan and throughout the world: often people with bad features become popular among the public owing to mass medias. Often their popularization make them even worse. It is impossible to predict such a transformation of people, who should be grateful only to journalists for the fact of their popularity, as the publication of a daily newspaper is a business which does not fix the moral-ethical characteristics of all of those, about which the information is released.

- By the way, Akif Naghi has repeatedly stated that the country must have a freedom of speech and expression. How can we assess the said statements of the head of the Organization for Karabakh Liberation after he beat the media representative?

- The recent action of Akif Naghi eliminates all of his recent statements about the freedom of speech and puts an end to his political career. Beating Zamin Hajili have become the last accord in the activity of Akif Naghi as a sociopolitical figure.

/Day.Az/