Journalist Rasim Aliyev, beaten up in Baku, dies in hospital

Doctors could not save the Azerbaijani freelance journalist Rasim Aliyev, who was hospitalized after being beaten up. This morning, he died in the Clinical Centre of Baku.

After being beaten up by a group of unidentified persons, Aliyev was taken, with fractures of several ribs, to City Clinical Centre No. 1 of Baku in the evening on August 8. The journalist associated the attack with his criticism of Djavid Guseinov, a player of the Football Club (FC) "Gabala" after its match with the FC "Apollon" from Larnaka.

On his page, Rasim Aliyev posted a video with an interview, in which when asked by a reporter from Cyprus why after the match Guseinov raised the flag of Turkey, the footballer said "Turks are my friends" and demonstrated an "indecent gesture" to the reporter. In his comment, Aliyev wrote that he would not want "such rude and misbehaving footballer to represent his country in the pitches of Europe." Later, the footballer called him and explained that his gesture was misinterpreted, and "he actually meant that Azerbaijan and Turkey are friendly countries."

Tonight Aliyev felt bad, after which he was operated on at the Baku City Clinical Centre, his sister Gyulnara Aliyeva told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. According to her story, after the surgery Rasim was put into the intensive care unit, where he died early in the morning today.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.