I usually post here about my hobbies and almost always in Azerbaijani. But I thought it was time to write about the experience.

For those who don’t know, my name is Javid Agha, and I am a journalist from Azerbaijan. August 27, 2024, was supposed to mark the beginning of a new chapter in my life — the day I would fly to Vilnius University in Lithuania to begin my studies. Instead, it became the day I learned firsthand how quickly freedom can disappear at the hands of the state.

At border control, I was pulled aside and informed that a travel ban had been placed on me. Within seconds, I found myself being escorted to a grey Range Rover, bound for the State Security Service headquarters in central Baku. The cold reality of state surveillance instantly replaced the academic dreams I had been nurturing.

I had prepared for this possibility. Knowing the risks that come with being a journalist in Azerbaijan, I had taken precautions before heading to the airport. I downloaded antivirus software to my phone, shared my parents’ and lawyer’s contact information with my colleague Ulviyya Ali, a fellow journalist who once worked for Voice of America’s Azerbaijani service and is now among the many journalists imprisoned in our country. I also arranged with my uncle to expect confirmation once I cleared passport control.

The ride to SSS headquarters was surreal. I sat wedged between two men in the back seat, with another imposing figure next to the driver. My phone buzzed — the call from my uncle that I had been dreading yet expecting. SSS officer turned it off, but this was a signal in itself. The delayed response was enough to trigger my family’s search efforts, though they would spend hours calling every government institution except the one that actually held me.

The journey through Baku’s streets took only minutes. After all, state security vehicles enjoy certain privileges, including the ability to ignore traffic laws. Upon arrival at SSS headquarters, I was immediately told the reason for my detention: I was considered a “close contact” of Bahruz Samadov.

For those unfamiliar with the name, Bahruz Samadov is an academician who was recently sentenced to 15 years in prison by an Azerbaijani court on charges of treason against the state. While I had anticipated that my work as a journalist might eventually put me on the radar of the security services, I never expected that my alleged proximity to Samadov would be the trigger.

It was probably around 6 AM when they started to question me. At first, they displayed their knowledge of my life. I wasn’t impressed – I have always lived my life in the open, deliberately transparent in my work and relationships. It’s a conscious choice: when you have nothing to hide, you become, in essence, unblackmailable.

I decided to go all in — complete transparency as my early gambit. I laid out my entire political ideology: I was a libertarian planning to use my education to return to Azerbaijani politics, eventually seeking a seat in parliament. I became so brutally honest that I even declared my intention to legalise marijuana for personal use, despite never having smoked it myself. “Are you mocking us?” one interrogator snapped. I met his glare without flinching. I was dead serious. I understood that this wasn’t just about Bahruz Samadov; they were studying me. At some point, I even told one of the interrogators that “I suspect you are a social democrat”. He denied it.

The interrogation stretched for twelve gruelling hours, ending at 6 PM. It unfolded in two distinct phases: an unofficial “getting to know you” session followed by formal questioning. The first phase was essentially psychological warfare disguised as conversation. I had braced myself for the stereotypical interrogation—burly men wielding threats of physical torture. I was mentally prepared for such brutality; in my family, being tortured for one’s beliefs is almost an inheritance.

What I learned later made the absurdity of the situation even more chilling: Samad Shikhi, another “witness” in this case, had reportedly been tortured by having a book repeatedly slammed against his head. The cruel irony? The book was Azerbaijan’s own Criminal Code. I guess I was lucky for “good cops”. They even brought me a latte from Starbucks – twice!

Apparently, my composure struck them as suspicious, though I don’t recall feeling particularly confident in that moment. Anar, a ranking officer who had studied law at a British university, observed that I seemed remarkably calm for someone closely associated with a person accused of crimes carrying a potential life sentence. His comment revealed the interrogators’ expectation: that fear should have consumed me, that the gravity of my alleged connection to Samadov should have left me trembling. Instead, my steady demeanour had become, in their eyes, evidence of something more sinister. He took out his phone to show me an interrogation scene from a movie. Turns out, I had the calmness of a psychopathic killer.

The questioning revealed that they knew more about Bahruz Samadov than me. To be frank, we weren’t on the best of terms. I won’t go into details about how we came to know each other in order to respect his privacy. But last time I saw him, he wanted to mend the schism between us that started 10 years ago and reconnect. He asked a mutual friend of ours to take a photo with me on August 10 – this is probably how SSS came to think I was his close contact.

Bahruz stood accused of collaborating with Armenian intelligence services. Yet the SSS interrogators frequently veered into bizarre tangents that seemed to have little bearing on matters of national security. At one point, they asked whether Bahruz belonged to a “sexual minority” — a question that left me genuinely puzzled about its relevance to a treason case. With dark humour born of exhaustion and absurdity, I replied that as far as I knew, he was quite the opposite — a notorious womaniser. I knew that they were looking for ways to humiliate Bahruz on TV. This indeed happened a few days later.

Questions came in relentless waves. I felt like I was simultaneously playing chess against multiple grandmasters, each move calculated to trap me. Finally, I decided to make a bold gambit. I looked at one of my interrogators and said, “At the end of the day, someone higher up the chain will call you and tell you to let me go.” The statement clearly caught them off guard. Their faces hardened, and they warned me I would be placed in an “isolation unit.” But their reaction told me everything I needed to know. Perhaps I was winning this psychological game after all.

Their focus shifted to the Baku Research Institute at some point, where I was working as a social media manager and an author at the time. SSS asked me tons of questions about Altay Goyushov, its founder and funding source. They asked me if I had ever handed out payments to employees. Perhaps I was naive, but I responded positively. I saw a spark in Anar’s eyes. He wanted to tie me to a possible currency smuggling case, just as they did with AbzasMedia, Meydan TV and Toplum TV cases. He asked if I had ever handled cash money. I disappointed him by telling him that I was paid legally, and even got my receipts from the bank. Everything was in order. Spark in the eyes was gone as well.

Then came the transition to official testimony — I was escorted to the upper floors by Anar and placed in a waiting room under guard. With nothing but time and nervous energy, I found myself inadvertently eavesdropping on the soldiers stationed around me.

One guard, who shared my first name, excitedly told his colleague about an upcoming event where they would catch a glimpse of Ali Naghiyev, the head of SSS, “from afar.” Their reverence was palpable, like schoolchildren discussing a celebrity sighting.

But it was their next conversation that proved more revealing. A soldier asked his superior who they should vote for in the approaching parliamentary elections. The response was chillingly matter-of-fact: “You’ll be given a name when the time comes.” The elections were held just days later, on September 1, 2024. The outcome, needless to say, surprised no one who understood how the system really worked.

Minutes later, I was escorted into the state investigator’s office. The room was starkly furnished—just a basic computer and his personal phone on an otherwise bare desk. What caught my attention were the incongruous details: a 1990s-style UHF antenna jutting awkwardly from the window, and most bizarrely, a large wrapped rifle propped against the wall like forgotten furniture.

“Don’t they have an evidence locker?” I wondered aloud, gesturing toward the weapon. The investigator followed my gaze with casual indifference. “Oh, that,” he said, as if discussing office supplies. “We seized it from another suspect.”

The nonchalant explanation only deepened the surreal atmosphere; here was alleged evidence in a criminal case, stored as carelessly as an umbrella in a corner. Later, I delivered my official testimony at length, detailing my minimal contact with Bahruz: occasional encounters at pubs and a single meeting at an Azerbaijani-Armenian academic conference in Brussels. Then came yet another question about Bahruz’s sexual life from the state investigator. By 3 PM, exhaustion had worn down my patience to nothing. I responded with deadpan sarcasm: “I don’t know — I wasn’t there, they didn’t invite me.” The investigator laughed at it as well.

The questioning then shifted to my participation in peace platforms, particularly Bright Garden Voices, and the names of Armenians I had met abroad. They presented allegations that Bahruz had photographed himself with Armenian church officials and maintained text communications with Armenian intelligence operatives. But didn’t show evidence regarding those. I tried earnestly to explain my belief in genuine peace initiatives: grassroots reconciliation between Armenians and Azerbaijanis built on human connection rather than political manipulation.

But the SSS operated from a fundamentally different worldview: every Armenian we encountered, they insisted, should be presumed an intelligence officer until proven otherwise. In their minds, the pursuit of peace was indistinguishable from treason. They went on to cite other instances of apprehended individuals working for the Armenian side; however, unlike Bahruz, they were shooting videos of actual military sites, sensitive locations, allegedly. 

After I provided the names of three Armenians I had met abroad, they summoned a soldier and had lunch brought to me from their own kitchen. I couldn’t determine whether this was a calculated “good cop” gesture or simple reward psychology – a small kindness designed to make me more compliant. Either way, the timing felt deliberate, leaving me to wonder what they hoped this unexpected hospitality would accomplish. Food was good, in any case.

After nearly eleven hours of relentless questioning, the investigator dropped what seemed like his trump card. “Have you ever read Bahruz’s accusations about the Khojaly genocide?” he asked, leaning forward. “Have you read where Bahruz wrote that the perpetrators were Azerbaijanis, not Armenians?”

I was genuinely taken aback. Bahruz’s entire body of work is publicly available online. I would have noticed such an explosive claim. “I’ve never read anything like that from him,” I replied. The only time I had ever heard such an allegation was in 2007, regarding journalist Eynulla Fatullayev. “This is the first I’m hearing of this,” I told him.

But when my words appeared in the official testimony, they had been subtly twisted: “I haven’t read it, but I have heard about it.” The difference was crucial and entirely deliberate. However, I was very exhausted at this point. It felt like fighting a never-ending battle. But they went even further after this. When I read the final verdict, I saw they misquoted me. But I will go into that later.

Around 6 PM, the interrogation finally drew to a close. I asked one of the investigators to see if people are talking about me online. He said social media was dead silent. Of course, I didn’t believe it; there was no way Ulviyya would let me down.

Sometime later, Anar returned with another question: about my desktop computer. This caught me off guard and left me slightly embarrassed; I had a habit of packing clothes inside my PC tower when travelling to cushion it in my luggage. Thinking quickly, I simply said I was a gamer.

Anar seemed surprised that I used a desktop instead of a laptop. What he didn’t know – and what I wasn’t about to volunteer – was that I had actually forgotten to bring my laptop on this trip. So I doubled down on the gaming story, explaining that laptops simply couldn’t handle demanding games as well as desktop computers. The white lie came easily enough, and it seemed to satisfy his curiosity.

He revealed that he, too, was a gamer: apparently a devoted fan of Civ VI. We even found ourselves discussing Game of Thrones, trading thoughts on characters and plot lines as if we were colleagues on a coffee break rather than interrogator and detainee.

My favourite character was Tyrion Lannister; his was Tywin. The choice struck me as perfectly fitting, I thought grimly, of course, the man who had spent twelve hours trying to break me down would admire the ruthless patriarch over the clever outcast.

He seemed genuinely perplexed by my professional connections—how did I know ambassadors from the US, UK, France, and Israel stationed in Baku? He pressed the point repeatedly, as if uncovering some conspiracy. “I’m a journalist,” I explained, stating what should have been obvious. Building relationships with diplomatic sources is part of the job. But logic held no currency in that room. It was an answer he simply refused to accept. I was still a Pandora’s box to open.

The investigator delivered what should have been good news: the prosecutor had determined my testimony was tangential to the investigation—I wouldn’t even be called to testify in court. Then Anar stepped in with his final performance, claiming that higher-ups had originally decided I would spend the night in their detention facility, but he had personally intervened on my behalf. A textbook “good cop” finale.

He returned my luggage and phone, though he notably kept my paracetamol. Apparently, pain relief was deemed too dangerous for release. He joked about it as well. As a parting gesture of magnanimity, he handed me 100 AZN for taxi fare home. “It’s my taxpayer money anyway,” I thought, and took it without hesitation, even though my parents didn’t like this.

The moment I powered on my phone, it erupted with twelve hours’ worth of accumulated chaos: missed calls and messaging notifications that had piled up. After spending several minutes clearing the backlog, I opened the antivirus application I had strategically installed before my airport journey.

There it was: the app detected malicious software that SSS had installed on my device during my detention. Rather than immediately deleting their surveillance tool, I made a calculated decision to leave it intact.

I immediately recognised the application’s name: “System Settings”—a perfect digital disguise masquerading as legitimate system software. The malware had been granted comprehensive access to my device: it recorded voice calls, captured screenshots every few seconds, forced excessive internet usage to transmit data packages, drained my battery by keeping the phone in a constant state of activity, and functioned as a keylogger tracking every keystroke.

This wasn’t my first encounter with SSS digital surveillance. When they had detained Bahruz for the first time — sometime around February 2024, though the incident went largely unreported — I believe they installed this same application on his phone. Weeks later, he had posted a screenshot of the mysterious app to a group chat, asking if any of us knew what it was. I should have thought that Bahruz’s arrest was inevitable. It was just a matter of time.

The first few days following my detention fundamentally altered my social landscape. My closest friends either blocked me on social media or deactivated their accounts entirely. Others chose a more painful route: pretending not to see me when we crossed paths on Baku’s streets, their eyes suddenly finding fascination in sidewalks and shop windows.

The diplomatic community proved equally telling in their responses. Only the ambassadors of Israel and France, along with Polish diplomats, maintained contact with me. The silence from other embassies was deafening. At the Election Day reception, a US embassy employee offered a candid justification for their distance: “Sometimes raising our voice could actually make things worse for people.”

Anar, meanwhile, continued his psychological campaign against me. SSS held my computer hostage under the absurd pretext of “security measures”—they claimed they needed to ensure I hadn’t installed a bomb or listening device inside the tower. What a criminal mastermind I must have appeared to them, always staying one step ahead of the country’s finest intelligence officers!

It was transparent nonsense, of course. They were systematically copying my hard drives and SSDs, hunting for incriminating documents. What they likely discovered instead was a treasure trove of strategy games and academic papers about the Caucasian Albanian language. Not exactly the smoking gun they were hoping for.

Anar contacted me from a UK number on WhatsApp, proposing a meeting to return my computer. We rendezvoused at Darvish Tea House, conveniently located just five minutes from SSS headquarters. What I had assumed would be a simple handover quickly revealed itself as an extension of my interrogation by other means.

He was relentlessly trying to recruit me, dangling increasingly elaborate carrots. At one point, he offered to fund my dream project: a historical-fantasy film for Netflix. Later, he floated the possibility of positioning me as a new opposition leader (although this is my conclusion, not his words), complete with a cynical performance schedule: I would be “detained” publicly from time to time while actually relaxing at exclusive state sanatoriums between acts.

When I publicly endorsed Vafa Naghi, a feminist candidate running for parliament in the Neftchala constituency, on social media, Anar’s surveillance apparatus kicked into gear once again. He texted me, confirming what I already suspected: SSS was monitoring my every online move.

His questions revealed the paranoid logic of the security state. Had I travelled to Neftchala for election monitoring? I replied simply: no. Then came the more revealing inquiry: did I think there was any possibility that Vafa Naghi might incite a popular insurrection if she lost the election?

I was genuinely baffled. Why would I possess insider knowledge about potential uprisings? “This is your job—to know your own people,” I responded. “Besides, Azerbaijanis aren’t exactly the coup type.”

A lawyer friend later provided clarity that chilled me: Anar was simply treating me as an informant, fishing for intelligence under the guise of casual conversation. The realisation struck deep. I had no desire for my name to appear in state archives with that particular designation attached to it.

Despite the constant harassment, I continued my journalistic work and maintained whatever friendships had survived the purge. One of those days, four days after my detention, SOCAR-funded propaganda channel Baku.tv released a defamatory video titled “Why did Bahruz Samadov work for the Armenians?” I watched it in another pub, where I was hanging out with another fellow exile. The piece portrayed me, alongside Samad Shikhi and Bahruz Samadov, as members of a terrorist organisation allegedly led by Giyas Ibrahimov — a man whose most dangerous act had been spray-painting graffiti on a monument to Heydar Aliyev.

My role in this supposed conspiracy merited exactly one sentence: “Javid Agha, who presents himself as a representative of a liberal worldview, insulting and denigrating national identity and values at every opportunity.”

That single line of state-sponsored character assassination was enough to terrify my father. He called immediately, his voice tight with panic, urging me to flee to my uncle’s house in the mountains. The propaganda machine had succeeded in weaponising even parental love against me.

The harassment temporarily subsided during Formula 1—even authoritarian states prefer to keep their dirty laundry hidden when the world’s cameras are watching. Some people left using the opportunity. But once the international spotlight moved on, Anar resumed his psychological campaign, this time driving directly to Kurdakhani, where I lived.

I attempted to dispel whatever grandiose theories SSS had constructed about my influence. “I’m not the mastermind you think I am,” I explained. “I’m simply well-known. Everyone recognises me, but that doesn’t mean I have some vast network of conspirators at my disposal.”

When I confronted him about the defamatory Baku.tv piece, his response was telling. He shrugged with practised indifference, implying that forces beyond even SSS had orchestrated the attack—a transparent reference to the Presidential Administration. The message was clear: he was merely a middle manager in a much larger machinery of repression.

Another reprieve came with COP29 – once again, international attention provided temporary sanctuary. Whenever Anar proposed a meeting during this period, I deployed a convenient cover story: I was part of a creative team producing promotional videos for the climate summit and simply too busy to meet. Well, it was true on paper – I was part of the team, just not involved in COP29.

What he didn’t know was that I had actually begun working with Radio Liberty’s Azerbaijan bureau—a development that would have interested him greatly.

The harassment finally ceased after I executed a carefully calculated gambit. I asked an ambassador (and a personal friend) of a close ally of Azerbaijan to invite me to a dinner. His time in Azerbaijan ended a week ago. He explained to me that one of his security details was an SSS officer. The plan was elegantly simple: the agent would observe me dining with the ambassador of an allied nation and report back to his superiors. My bet was that SSS would interpret diplomatic access as untouchability. The strategy worked perfectly. Anar’s final message to me carried a note of resignation: “Seems like you’re keeping this number alive only for me.”

He wasn’t wrong—I had already acquired a new phone and number under different names. But my reply was truthful: “No, I need it for some banks and taxes.”

The travel ban remained in effect until January 2025. When Bahruz’s court hearings finally began, I formally requested that SSS lift the restriction. The positive response came via phone. I travelled to Turkey, to my parents’ house, carrying only the clothes I could pack and the weight of an uncertain future. As I write this, I no longer know when—or if—I will return to my country.

The silence I was forced to maintain throughout the court hearings proved to be a strategic mistake. Eventually, I was summoned back to Baku to testify—apparently, they had lied to me during the investigation after all. When I saw the official court documents, I discovered they had brazenly falsified my testimony.

The fabricated statement claimed that Bahruz had displayed anti-Azerbaijan propaganda on social networks regarding the Karabakh war, alleged that Azerbaijan committed the Khojaly genocide to help Armenians escape a difficult situation, and sided with Armenians in the conflict.

These were words I had never spoken, allegations I had never made, testimony I had never given. Obviously, even if Bahruz stated such opinions, this wouldn’t be enough to claim he committed treason against the state. Yet there they were, bearing my name in an official court record, a perfect example of how justice becomes fiction in the hands of those who wield law as a weapon.

Using the opportunity, I will add two more corrections to my falsified testimony:

1. “Since Bahruz’s speech was against Azerbaijan, the Armenians participating in the event called it a brave speech.”

   This is a gross oversimplification. Armenian participants asked him if he felt any fear at all for repercussions. Bahruz believed that this is simply not how the Azerbaijani government works. That’s exactly what he said. Bahruz thought that the Azerbaijani system only comes after organised people, teams and groups, not lone wolves like himself. To be fair, I also believed in this. How naive we were. I joked that “among our friends, there is a joke that Bahruz is trying to get arrested, but the government simply doesn’t care about him.” At the end of the meeting, Bahruz came to me, smirking, saying getting arrested was not his intention at all. “Maybe Ahmad Mammadli is trying, though,” he laughed.

2. “At that workshop, he met an Armenian woman, Irina Safaryan, in a public setting, but later blocked her on social networks due to her racist remarks against Azerbaijanis.”

   This is not true, and this is not how I testified. I blocked Irina even before we accidentally met. This topic even came up when we met.

This is as far as I can recall about my arrest and subsequent harassment. Now I am in Warsaw, and a year has passed since my detention; therefore, some details might be murky. I believe Bahruz is innocent. He is just another victim in the endless attacks of the Azerbaijani authoritarian regime against free speech and academic freedom.