in France, killer commandos on the trail of an Azerbaijani opponent – ​​Libération

At the end of September, a refugee fleeing the oil regime was found stabbed to death in Mulhouse. The homicide, still unsolved, echoes the assassination attempts of Mahammad Mirzali, a YouTuber in Baku's sights. The judicial investigation into this latest affair, to which “Libération” had access, details for the first time the mechanics of these attacks from the Caucasus.

In Azerbaijan, in the last century, Vidadi Isgandarli was a prosecutor. A solid and feared guy in a suit and tie, chasing corruption in the small, newly independent country, say those close to him. Then the authorities pushed him aside. The magistrate would have stuck his nose in the affairs of the Aliyevs, autocrats from father to son – first Heydar, then today the son, Ilham – who have ruled since 1993 over this part of the Caucasus gorged with hydrocarbons, controversial host of the COP29. After a stint in Baku jails for denouncing, in 2010, rigged legislative elections in which he was an opposition candidate, Isgandarli went into exile in Georgia, then in France. Without knowing that Paris would become, a few years later, one of Aliyev's main targets. To the point that France decided, Wednesday November 13, to boycott COP29, after a