A newspaper editor is on trial in Azerbaijan on hate speech charges
for translating Adolf Hitler's autobiography "Mein Kampf" into Azeri,
according to a June 24, 2009 report by the Center for Journalism in
Extreme Situations, an NGO that focuses on press freedom issues in the
former Soviet Union. Avez Zeynally, editor of the newspaper "Khural,"
wrote a preface to his translation that a court appointed expert
commission found incited violence and expressed sympathy for Hitler, a
conclusion that he emphatically denies. Nevertheless, the trial in the
Narimanovsky district court of Baku continues. Mr. Zeynally's
translation came under legal scrutiny in 2004 when the head of the
Community of Mountain Jews, Semyon Ikhlov, filed a formal complaint.
The security police closed the investigation a year later, only to
have its decision reversed in 2007 by the Prosecutor General's office,
which pressed charges under Article 283 of the Criminal Code
(incitement of social, racial or religious hatred and enmity).
