Baku ‘treason’

BAKU: Azerbaijan on Monday threw out a journalist’s appeal after he was jailed on charges of high treason, which he and rights groups have denied as politically motivated. Polad Aslanov -- editor of news websites xeberman.com and press.az, known for harsh criticism of the tightly-controlled nation’s government -- was sentenced in November to 16 years behind bars on charges of spying for Iran. An appeals court in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku "rejected (Aslanov’s) appeal in an unjust ruling, fulfilling the government’s political orders," his wife Gulmira Aslanova said.