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Azerbaijani Official Accuses Washington Post of 'Lies, Distortion of Facts'

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The head of the public-political issues department at the Azerbaijani president's office accused The Washington Post of the deliberate distortion of facts in its article about journalists in the country.

BAKU (Sputnik) — The head of the public-political issues department of Azerbaijani president's office on Wednesday accused The Washington Post newspaper of lies and deliberate distortion of facts in the media outlet's article about apartments for reporters.

On Monday, the US newspaper published an article titled "In Azerbaijan, some journalists get free apartments. Others get jail cells." In the article, the news outlet reported about the celebration of "National Press Day" in the post-Soviet republic, during which President Ilham Aliyev awarded apartments to hundreds of journalists, and at the same time about the alleged campaign against other journalists.

"It is malicious intent and twisted logic to link the measures aimed at the improvement of housing problems of journalists with the cases of people arrested for specific criminal actions. Lies, distortion of facts… these are the features of this article and of this media outlet's information policy," Ali Hasanov said, as quoted by the press service.

The official said that it was not a coincidence that US President Donald Trump had repeatedly accused The Washington Post of publishing fake news and added that the newspaper was being used by certain political groups to put pressure on heads of states, politicians, companies and even several countries.

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"That's why the calls of The Washington Post and people orchestrating it about a 'democratic struggle' and 'the freedom of press' is nothing more than a hype," Hasanov added.

This is not the first critical publication targeting Azerbaijan in recent days. On Monday, The Guardian newspaper published its own investigation, claiming that Azerbaijani authorities "laundered" about $2.9 billion, with the help of offshore-managed UK companies linked to President Ilham Aliyev, ministries and the International Bank of Azerbaijan. The information about the scheme was leaked by an anonymous source to the Danish Berlingske newspaper that later shared it to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, The Guardian and several other news outlets.

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