Adjara Group lawyer says Azerbaijani blogger Bakikhanov jumped from hotel roof

Adjara Group lawyer [Adjara Group owns Rooms Hotels in Georgia] says that Azerbaijani opposition blogger Hussein Bakikhanov jumped from the seventh floor of their hotel in central Tbilisi and that two hotel employees witnessed the incident on July 14. 

• Azerbaijani blogger Hussein Bakikhanov found dead in Tbilisi

Initially it was reported that Bakikhanov, who was seeking asylum in Georgia, was found dead in his flat in Tbilisi. 

Director General of Adjara Group Ana Dabrundashvili says that they were cooperating with organisation World Vision, which sends candidates to Adjara Group to help them find jobs. 

Dabrundashvili said that the Adjara Group administration had no information on Bakikhanov’s profession and activities. 

He successfully completed a job interview and we had plans to hire him,” Dabrundashvili said. 

Bakikhanov said in mid-July that a group of Azerbaijanis attacked him in central Tbilisi.

Lawyer of Rooms Hotel Kakhaber Tsereteli says that the hotel administration was familiarising Bakikhanov and other successful interviewees with the hotel interior and infrastructure when the blogger got lost and was later found by two hotel employees on the roof. 

He put his belongings down and jumped from the seventh floor,” Tsereteli said. 

Georgian Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri says that 'murder is 99 per cent excluded because the case has witnesses. We are investigating now whether someone pushed him to commit suicide.' News of the death of Bakikhanov, who was critical of the Azerbaijani government, was released on July 29.

On Monday, Georgia's TV Pirveli channel said it had obtained audio messages allegedly sent by Bakikhanov to his friends hours before his death. The channel said the recordings showed the activist accusing the Georgian police of "falsifying facts" of his interview about an assault on him in downtown Tbilisi last month by a group of ethnic Azerbaijanis.

In the audio messages, the voice allegedly belonging to the blogger accuses the Georgian police of "failing to record facts" of the incident, which he alleges to have been masterminded by the Azerbaijani government in an effort to silence his critical reporting. Among the allegations, the voice in the recording says the law enforcement officers had noted a wish to obtain Georgian citizenship as the purpose of his entering the country, in contrast to his actual request of political asylum.

Speaking about the attack on Freedom Square, a person allegedly in contact with Bakikhanov before his death told TV Pirveli the blogger had been approached by the group with an offer of assistance in travelling to Germany, in return for forming contacts with Azerbaijani activists currently in political exile in Europe, for the purpose of collecting information on them.

The Georgian channel was told the activist had refused the offer, which led to the group physically assaulting him. The alleged point of contact also said the Georgian police's investigation into the journalist's death as a suicide was "wrong", adding Bakikhanov had been "killed, driven to death".

The interviewee also told the TV channel one of the three assailants worked for the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tbilisi, another was employed by the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR), and the third was a member of the Azeri diaspora in Georgia.

As part of reactions around the case, Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Mukhtarli, currently residing in Germany through asylum, said on social media Bakikhanov's brother had been stopped in airport in Baku while attempting to travel to Georgia on Monday following the death of the blogger, and refused departure.

Mukhtarli said the "unlawful" intervention raised "further suspicions" about the Azerbaijani government's involvement in the death.