Soraya Post, author. – Madam President, on 29 May 2017 the Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Mukhtarli disappeared from his exile in Tbilisi, Georgia. He was abducted and, according to his own account, beaten up and thrown into a car. The next day he was in Baku, Azerbaijan. Mukhtarli has since then been sentenced to prison.

We are happy that the European Union has a broad cooperation with Azerbaijan, and we would like to deepen that. But let us be very clear that to breach the sovereignty of other countries to abduct, beat up and imprison journalists and critics of the government is completely unacceptable. We utterly condemn what has happened to Mr Mukhtarli and call on the Georgian Government to ensure a prompt investigation. We call on the Azerbaijani Government to immediately drop all the bogus charges against Afgan Mukhtarli and release him from prison and, with him, let all the political prisoners go.