Dissident Spotlight: Khadija Ismayilova
Khadija Ismayilova is a radio host from Azerbaijan who faced imprisonment for reporting on her government too accurately.

After Azerbaijan’s dictator, Ilham Aliyev, killed engineer-turned-journalist Elmar Huseynov in 2005, Khadija Ismayilova knew what she wanted to do with her journalism career. Ismayilova became the head of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in 2008 and grew into a prominent radio host.
Her reporting includes 2010 and 2011 breakdowns of the creative ways Azerbaijan’s dictator and his family use the state to steal. She identified the companies that the ruling family registered under false names and used to gain monopolies in different industries. One company had a monopoly on 3G technology in Azerbaijan. Another was an airlines logistics company that provided most or all services to Azerbaijani Airlines.
Azerbaijan ranks 164 out of 180 countries in Freedom House’s press freedom index. Aliyev allowed few dissidents to begin with, but his crackdown on human rights workers in the mid-2010s dropped Azerbaijan’s ranking to the nadir it sits at today.
Accuracy is Punished in Dictatorships
In December 2014, Azerbaijan’s police arrested Ismayilova. She was charged with tax evasion, embezzlement, and inciting a former colleague to attempt suicide.
All three charges were meritless. Azerbaijan’s courts didn’t allow journalists in the trial or review the government’s evidence. Ismayilova also refused to testify in a trial that was clearly politically motivated. Not only did the government lack evidence, but other human rights workers faced charges of similar financial crimes around the same time.
Ismayilova was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, but she was released on probation after five years. She became the editor-in-chief of a TV news station that Azerbaijani authorities raided in March 2024.
Ismayilova and journalists like her fight for the right to report accurately on their country’s leaders. Government officials are charged with running a state that delivers services for its citizens: infrastructure, social programs, and other services citizens vote to have provided.
Leaders like Aliyev undermine the promise a leader who purports to work on behalf of his people makes. They create organizations that pull money from taxpayers instead of managing the environment the country’s citizens live and work in.
It’s insulting to refuse ordinary people the right to describe the world as they see it. The freedom to accurately describe the world is foundational to something as intimate as freedom of thought.
Aliyev represents the autocrat’s betrayal: claiming to speak on behalf of a people who are not allowed to describe what they see in it.