harassment. Access to opposition newspaper websites was blocked. Radio Azadliq (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Azerbaijani service), Meydan TV, and Azerbaycan SAATI, remained blocked following a claim by the prosecutor’s office that they posed a threat to national security. On 12 May, a court in the capital, Baku, ruled in favour of keeping the websites blocked. PROSECUTION OF CRITICS The authorities continued to arbitrarily arrest and detain independent journalists and bloggers. According to Azerbaijani human rights defenders more than 150 people remained in prison on politically motivated charges, and the number of such cases continued to grow. On 9 January, police officers detained and held blogger Mehman Huseynov overnight in incommunicado detention. He reported that he was beaten by the police and subjected to electric shocks while in custody. On 3 March, a court in Baku sentenced him to two years in prison for “defaming” police officers. On 12 January, Afgan Sadygov, a journalist and blogger from Jalilabad District, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. He was prosecuted under hooliganism charges, after writing about government corruption and refusing to remove his articles from the internet. On 14 June, Fikret Faramazoglu, editor of the independent news website Journalistic Research Centre, was sentenced to seven years in prison and banned from his profession for a further two years. He had been detained on 30 June 2016 for allegedly extorting money from a restaurant owner, charges that he denied. FORCIBLE RETURNS The authorities intensified their clampdown on critics who had fled the country, and unlawfully transferred many of them back to Azerbaijan and harassed their families. Investigative journalist Afgan Mukhtarli was abducted in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, on 29 May, and reappeared in the custody of Azerbaijani border police the following day. He said he had been abducted and trafficked Amnesty International Report 2017/18 across the border by security services, who accused him of a range of offences including smuggling. He remained in detention and his trial was ongoing at the end of the year. Russian-Israeli-Ukrainian blogger Aleksandr Lapshin, who published critical posts on the situation in Azerbaijan’s breakaway NagornoKarabakh region, was arrested in Belarus, and extradited to Azerbaijan in February. In July, a court in Baku sentenced him to three years in prison for entering the breakaway region illegally. He was released on 11 September after a presidential pardon. RIGHTS OF LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENDER AND INTERSEX PEOPLE On 22 September, more than 100 LGBTI individuals were rounded up by the police in public spaces and detained. Some were released, but at least 48 were sentenced to administrative detention, ranging from 10 to 20 days. They were accused of “resisting police’s legitimate orders”, and found guilty on the basis of police officers’ allegations, without any further evidence. The summary hearings fell short of international trial standards. The detainees said they had been beaten by the police and subjected to other ill-treatment while in custody. All were released on 2 October. UNFAIR TRIALS Unfair trials were commonplace, particularly in politically motivated proceedings, during which suspects were typically detained and charged without access to a lawyer of their choice. Police continued using torture and other ill-treatment to extract forced confessions which were later used by judges as incriminating evidence. Allegations of torture and other ill-treatment were not effectively investigated. On 25 January, the Baku Serious Crimes Court sentenced 18 men associated with the Shi’ite Muslim Unity Movement (MUM) in Nardaran to lengthy prison terms. Their trial did not meet international standards of fairness and was marred by numerous torture allegations. During the trial, the defendants complained of having been tortured into 83