Azerbaijan on Tuesday sentenced in absentia a prominent France-based blogger and government critic Mahammad Mirzali to six and a half years in prison, a court in Baku said.
A judge said Mirzali was guilty of “calling for mass unrest” and “public appeals against the state”.
The court said Mirzali, who has lived in France for several years, did not respond to summonses and his case was tried in absentia.
Mirzali is among the most prominent exiled Azerbaijani dissidents.
In 2021 he was punched and stabbed in the western French city of Nantes, in an assault he said was politically motivated.
In October, another France-based critic of the Azerbaijani government, blogger Vidadi Isgandarli, died of his wounds two days after being stabbed in his apartment in the eastern city of Mulhouse.
His family called it a “politically motivated assassination”.
Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic led by strongman Ilham Aliyev since 2003, has long been accused by rights groups of stifling political dissent and independent journalism.