Azerbaijan opens probe against prominent writer

Azerbaijan has opened a criminal case against a prominent author who has been a target of a state-approved intimidation campaign after publishing a novel he says was intended to build bridges with arch-foe Armenia.

"Police launched a criminal case against me on hooliganism charges," Akram Aylisli, who has received threats and seen his books burned, told AFP on April 1.    

"They say I hit a police officer in the face, which is of course untrue," the 78-year-old author added.

Aylisli said he was briefly detained in the Baku airport on Wednesday and prevented from travelling to Italy where he was due to attend a literary festival in Venice.
 
"A border officer told me that I am banned from travelling abroad, but later returned my passport and I was released," he said  

Aylisli's novella "Stone Dreams", which depicts relations between ethnic Azerbaijanis and Armenians in Azerbaijan, sparked outrage in the country for what critics say is a pro-Armenian presentation of the bloody conflict between the ex-Soviet neighbours over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
 
The novella's 2013 publication in a Russian-language magazine, Friendship of Peoples, was followed by a hostile intimidation campaign after the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan party demanded that the writer repudiate his book and apologise before the nation.
 
Days later crowds started regularly gathering outside Aylisli's home, burning effigies of him and shouting insults.
 
Azerbaijan's strongman leader Ilham Aliyev has stripped Aylisli of his honorary title of "People's Writer", his medals and a presidential pension.
 
The writer's wife and son were forced to resign from their jobs. Televised auto-da-fes of the writer's books were...