Khadija Rovshan gizi Ismayilova (, ; born 27 May 1976), alternatively spelled Ismailova, is an Azerbaijani investigative journalist and radio host who is currently working for the Azerbaijani service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, until recently as the host of the daily debate show İşdən Sonra. She is a member of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Ismayilova has been targeted by Ilham Aliyev's authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan for her reporting on financial corruption among Azerbaijan's ruling elite. In December 2014, Ismayilova was arrested on charges of incitement to suicide, a charge widely criticized by human rights organizations as ludicrous. On 1 September 2015, Ismayilova was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison under charges of embezzlement and tax evasion. On 25 May 2016, the Azerbaijani supreme court ordered Ismayilova released on probation. In December 2017, Ismayilova received the Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as "Alternative Nobel Prize", "for her courage and tenacity in exposing corruption at the highest levels of government through outstanding investigative journalism in the name of transparency and accountability." Ismayilova was not allowed to travel from Azerbaijan to Sweden to receive the award.
Early life and education Khadija Ismayilova was born in Baku. She has stated that she experienced a happy childhood, learning to swim in the Caspian Sea. She grew up during the Cold War and experienced the national liberation during her youth, culminating in war.Die Kaviar-Connection (1/2) Die Macht des Geldes 2021, Documentary, ArteTV. 5:00min She attended Baku School #135 and graduated in 1992, when Azerbaijan became independent of the Soviet Union. She graduated from the Baku State University with a degree in philology in 1997.
Career From 1997 to 2007, she worked as a journalist for a number of local and foreign media outlets, including the newspaper Zerkalo, Caspian Business News and the Azerbaijani edition of the Voice of America. She has stated that the murder of Elmar Huseynov, an engineer turned journalist who "was the first to report on state corruption" was a turning point in her life.
Investigative reporting From 2008 to 2010, Ismayilova was the head of the Azerbaijani service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, after which she continued working there as a regular staff reporter. Beginning in 2010, a series of her articles dealing with state-level corruption in Azerbaijan caused great controversy as they explicitly named Azerbaijan's current President Ilham Aliyev, his wife Mehriban Aliyeva and their children as engaging in corruption. The government never issued a comment regarding any of these reports. Two of these articles were named the best investigative reports of 2010 and 2011 by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Azerbaijan's media is strictly controlled by the government. Thus, this sort of investigative reporting is highly unusual.
Following the March 2010 publication of a Washington Post article, which used Ismayilova's work as background information, that the eleven-year-old son of Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev owned real estate in the United Arab Emirates worth 44 million USD, Ismayilova co-published an article based on her investigation which shed light on the business activity of other members of the President's family and the family's close circle of friends. The article specifically described Ilham Aliyev's younger daughter Arzu Aliyeva's activities, as she reportedly owned a bank that had never been privatised since its establishment. Arzu Aliyeva was also reported a co-owner of a holding which had been winning unannounced tenders and seized control of all profitable services of Azerbaijan Airlines, such as airport taxi, duty-free, on-board catering, and airplane technical support, without any transparent financial reporting.
In June 2011, Ismayilova's next controversial publication revealed the names of offshore companies which had been registered in the names of Aliyev's daughters. This report also alleged that the Aliyev daughters owned one of the mobile operators and the 3G monopolist of Azerbaijan. It also claimed that the mobile operator had been falsely naming Siemens as its legal owner in order to be able to participate in state tenders to evade the Azerbaijani law not allowing newly registered companies to do so.
In May 2012, an investigative report co-authored by Ismayilova, alleged that the AIMROC consortium in charge of extracting gold and silver worth US$2.5 billion from the Chovdar mine was owned by three Panamanian companies (different from the ones mentioned in the previous report), with the wife and daughters of the president as their senior managers. The president's office refused to comment on the matter.
On 12 June 2012, the National Assembly of Azerbaijan adopted amendments to three laws, stipulating that from then on, information on the ownership of companies, including names and share of the owners, could only be released either on court orders or as part of a police investigation, on the orders of a financial monitoring agency, or by consent of the company owner only. According to Azerireport, this was the government's response to Khadija Ismayilova's journalist investigations, which brought the corruption of the Azerbaijani government to public attention. Opposition member Ilgar Mammadov also linked the adoption of the amendments to the corruption scandal caused by the reports and said it would turn Azerbaijan itself into a corruption-friendly offshore zone. It is noteworthy that almost simultaneously, on 13 June 2012, the National Assembly passed a law granting all ex-Presidents and ex-First Ladies lifelong legal immunity.
In October 2012, Ismayilova and two Czech journalists authored another investigative report, part of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, writing that high-ranking officials of Azerbaijan and their family members had companies registered in their names in the Czech Republic and through those companies owned luxury real estate in Karlovy Vary. Arzu Aliyeva (who reportedly owns a one-million-dollar villa), Ilham Aliyev's father-in-law Arif Pashayev, Sheikh ul-Islam of the Caucasus Allahshukur Pashazadeh, his brother Member of Parliament Javanshir Pashazadeh, Member of Parliament Adil Aliyev and the latter's brother Allahverdi Aliyev were mentioned among Azerbaijani company owners in the Czech Republic who in turn owned property there. According to a Freedom House report, Azerbaijani law prohibits government officials, including the president, from owning businesses, but there are no such restrictions on family members. In the report, Ismayilova quoted Vasif Movsumov, executive director of the Baku-based Anti-Corruption Foundation, as saying the ownership of the said companies by Parliament Members is a violation of law.
Opinions and views In a 2011 interview to Gunaz TV, Khadija Ismayilova said she believed that Islamists affiliated with Iran's intelligence were directly responsible for the assassination of publicist Rafiq Tağı.
Ismayilova condemned the murder of Gurgen Margaryan by Azerbaijani officer Ramil Safarov by calling it an "awful act" and said, unlike some, she did not consider him a hero. In August 2012, she mentioned on her Facebook account that the warm welcome Safarov had received in Azerbaijan after being extradited and pardoned stemmed from the fact that "the people of Azerbaijan lost the war, lost the territory to occupants, became refugees, lost their siblings including civilians, and they were stopped and banned from restoring justice on the battlefield". She also criticised President Aliyev for not exercising his right to pardon a convicted criminal in the proper manner, which made Azerbaijan an easy target of criticism by the international community.
In August 2013, while commenting on the release of the list of people declared personae non gratae in Azerbaijan for visiting the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Ismailyova noted that some of the people whose names appear on the list, especially those for whom no reason for the ban has been listed, are in fact journalists and human rights activists who apparently were barred from entering Azerbaijan for criticising the Azerbaijani government in their articles, as it is not evident if they have ever visited Nagorno-Karabakh.
When talking about her position on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Ismayilova said a 2022 interview to the German magazine zenith that despite her criticism of Ilham Aliyev's rule and her collecting signatures for a petition to solve crimes committed by the Azerbaijani army during the Second Karabakh War, she held Armenia responsible for keeping Azerbaijani territory under occupation in violation of international law. She stressed that the conflict started "long before Aliyev came to power" and that the voices of the 600,000 Azerbaijanis turned into refugees during the First Karabakh War needed to be heard as well. According to Ismayilova, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is not about democracy or corruption, but about Russia fueling it so it can maintain its influence on its periphery. She regretted having lost the support of some of her friends in the West for her stance but maintained that her freedom of speech should not be limited to her criticism of Aliyev and his government.
2012 sex tape and blackmail On 7 March 2012, Ismayilova received what appeared to be snapshots of a footage from a camera hidden in her bedroom, capturing her engaged in sexual intercourse with her boyfriend. Attached was a letter containing threats of "public humiliation", if Ismayilova did not "behave". Similar snapshots were received by her boyfriend, some relatives and a number of opposition media outlets.
Ismayilova publicly refused to give in to the blackmailers. On 14 March, the original footage of the intercourse scene was posted on a website posing as the website of the opposition party Musavat. The party officials stated the website did not represent them and condemned the act. Ismayilova blamed the government, primarily the Presidential Administration, for ordering her sex-taped and launching a smear campaign to retaliate for her investigative activity. Ismayilova submitted a report to the Attorney General's Office on the day after receiving the snapshots, but the office did not start an investigation until after the video was publicised.
Numerous local and international organizations showed their support for Ismayilova and condemned attempts to blackmail her, among them the Institute for Media Rights (Azerbaijan), Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety (Azerbaijan), Amnesty International, Committee to Protect Journalists, Association of Women Journalists (Azerbaijan), the local Helsinki Committee for Human Rights and others. In her letter to President Ilham Aliyev, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović insisted that those responsible for the blackmail be identified and prosecuted.
In April 2012, British pop singer Sandie Shaw joined an Amnesty International campaign to end human rights abuses in Azerbaijan. Shaw stated on behalf of Ismayilova's case: "That anyone would stoop so low in an attempt to silence an independent journalist is sickening. The people behind this appalling blackmail and smear campaign must be brought to justice. And the persecution of independent journalists in Azerbaijan must stop."
On 26 April 2012, the Attorney General's office released the names of all those who lived or visited the apartment where the sex-taping took place. Ismayilova criticised this act, saying that instead of carrying out an investigation, the Attorney General's office is echoing the blackmailers in intervening in her personal life by doing this.