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An appellate court in Azerbaijan should overturn the baseless convictions of two journalists charged with inciting mass disorder in Quba, the statement of the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

The organization reports that the Khachmaz District Court in northeastern Azerbaijan on Friday convicted Vugar Gonagov, director of the regional TV channel Khayal, and Zaur Guliyev, Khayal TV's chief editor, and handed them each a suspended three-year prison term, regional news reports said. "We are relieved that Vugar Gonagov and Zaur Guliyev were set free, but they had committed no crime and should not have spent a single day in jail. Their cases illustrate why Azerbaijan is one of the world's worst jailers of the press," said Muzaffar Suleymanov, CPJ's Europe and Central Asia research associate.

The statement of the organization says that Azerbaijan holds at least seven other journalists in jail, making the country the seventh worst jailer of journalists in the world, CPJ research shows.

Authorities imprisoned Gonagov and Guliyev on March 13, 2012, in the northeastern city of Quba, and accused them of publishing on YouTube a video of a regional governor making insulting comments about local residents at a government meeting. Thousands of demonstrators gathered to demand the resignation of Khabibov. The clashes erupted when the protesters were forced to disperse, as a result several journalists were beaten. "Khayal TV" shot the rally, the records, however, were shortly destroyed by the order of the local government. Gonagov and Guliyev deny their involvement in downloading the video in the Internet.