Watchdog

Reports from Iraq say an outspoken secular Iraqi journalist has been shot dead at his Baghdad home.

Iraq’s Journalistic Freedoms Observatory says journalist Raed al-Juburi “was killed with a bullet to the heart” on May 5 in Baghdad’s Qadisiyah neighborhood.

It said the motives behind the killing were not immediately clear.

But some of Juburi’s colleagues said he was being threatened and had recently handed out the phone number of the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory in case something happened to him.

Juburi hosted a TV program on the Al-Rasheed channel and wrote an opinion column in the Azzaman newspaper.

Colleagues say he did not shy away from blaming Iraqi politicians for the country’s security and economic troubles.

An Iraqi security spokesman told Iraqiya state television that a preliminary investigation suggested Juburi may have committed suicide.

But the dead journalist’s father rejected that claim.

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said the source of threats against Juburi could have been political.

Based on reporting by AFP and Iraqiya

A court in Azerbaijan has jailed a leading opposition activist to six-and-a-half years in jail on drugs charges that have been described as politically motivated by government critics.

The serious crimes court in Baku found Faradj Kerimli, deputy head of the opposition party Musavat, guilty of large-scale narcotics dealing, his lawyer Neimat Kerimli said.

The lawyer said the defendant had already dismissed the charges as fabricated.

The attorney said Kerimli, who had run Musavat's website and Facebook page, used them as a platform to blow the whistle on widespread corruption in the regime of President Ilham Aliyev.

In March, Kerimli's brother, Siradj, was also sentenced to six years in prison.

Rights groups say the authorities have stepped up their campaign to stifle opposition since Aliyev's election to a third term in 2013.

Aliyev came to power in 2003 following an election seen as flawed by international observers.

He took over after the death of his father Heydar Aliyev, who had ruled newly independent Azerbaijan with an iron fist since 1993.

Based on reporting by AFP