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Azerbaijan’s Balakan district court has sentenced journalist Afgan Mukhtarli to 6 year in jail, Turan news agency reported.

The journalist’s supporters who were present at the trial sang the anthem of Azerbaijan as a protest to the verdict, the source said.

The state prosecutor had asked the court to sentence Mukhtarli to 8 years in prison. The journalist stated the criminal case had been falsified, adding he was facing prosecutions for investigating corruption among the ruling elite of Azerbaijan.

Afgan Mukhtarli is recognized as a political prisoner both by local and international human rights groups.

To remind, Afgan Mukhtarli, an investigative journalist and human rights activist who had been living in Tbilisi, Georgia since 2015, went missing on 29 May. He was kidnapped in the Georgian capital Tbilisi by a group of unknown men, beaten up and taken forcibly to the Azeri-Georgian border, where he was detained by Azeri police.

The European Parliament, the US Department of State and number of international watchdogs called for immediate and unconditional release of the journalist, citing risks of torture and other ill-treatment in a detention facility in Baku persecuting Mukhtarli solely for his work as a journalist.