Intrepid Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova has been released from prison after a substantial international campaign. Judges commuted her seven-and-a-half-year jail term – a punishment for exposing corrupt dealings by President Ilham Aliyev and his family – to a suspended sentence of three and a half years in an unexpected ruling in late May. ‘I’m going to continue my investigations,’ an undaunted Khadija told Radio Liberty. ‘There is always work to do in a country like Azerbaijan where corruption is on such a large scale.’
Chad’s former dictator Hissène Habré was sentenced to life imprisonment and convicted of crimes against humanity by a special court in Senegal in May, after a 26-year legal fight by victims of his bloody 1982-90 reign. Human Rights Watch lawyer Reed Brody said that the day of Habré’s imprisonment would be ‘carved into history as the day that a band of unrelenting survivors brought their despot to justice’.
