Seymur Khazi faced a travel ban from Azerbaijan.

The Deputy Chairman of the opposition party the Popular Front of Azerbaijan, Seymur Khazi, was restricted from leaving the country when he was heading to Vilnius to participate in an event for the laureates of a journalism award. According to the opposition figure, the Ministry of Internal Affairs imposed the ban without explanation, and he considers this decision illegal.

As reported by "Caucasian Knot", Seymur Khazi, while being a columnist for the newspaper "Azadlyg" ("Freedom") and the host of the television program "Azerbaijani Hour", which broadcasts via satellite from abroad, became one of the laureates of the annual Gerd Bucerius Prize awarded by the German "ZEIT-Stiftung" and the Norwegian "Free Word" foundation. At that time, he was serving a prison sentence. In August 2014, Khazi was arrested on charges of hooliganism and sentenced to imprisonment. In 2024, the European Court of Human Rights recognized the criminal prosecution of Seymur Khazi and his five-year prison sentence as unlawful.

The Deputy Chairman of the Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan (PFPA), Seymur Khazi, faced a travel ban from the country.

As Khazi told a correspondent of "Caucasian Knot", he learned about this when he was preparing to leave from Baku airport abroad on the morning of September 12.

"International organizations that awarded me the Gerd Bucerius Prize for 'Free Media' in 2016 invited me to events involving the laureates of this award, which are scheduled for September 17-19 in Vilnius. I decided to go to Lithuania earlier. I planned to fly to Vilnius via Tbilisi and also see my relatives in Georgia. But this morning at the airport, it turned out that the Ministry of Internal Affairs had imposed a travel ban on me and did not allow me to board the flight to Tbilisi. No reasons were explained," Khazi said.

He called the ban illegal.

"I am not a subject of any criminal cases. The ban is illegal. I will try to clarify the reasons," Khazi said.

It was not possible to obtain comments from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

A citizen whose right to leave the country is restricted should be notified in advance about this, said a legal expert, former member of the Azerbaijan Bar Association Yalchin Imanov.

According to him, under Article 9 of the Migration Code of Azerbaijan, a temporary travel ban can be applied within the framework of criminal cases, in particular, when choosing a preventive measure against the accused, imposing a conditional sentence, or community service. Restrictions are also possible in case of non-fulfillment of a court sentence, tax obligations, or financial sanctions. In all other cases, the ban is unlawful, the lawyer previously stated to a correspondent of "Caucasian Knot".