Vice World News: ‘They Tried To Cut Out My Tongue’: Blogger Survives Brutal Street Attack
Photo by Sergi Kabrera
March 19, 2021
PARIS – While Mahammad Mirzali was being stabbed in the neck by a gang of five men in a savage attack carried out in broad daylight on a Sunday afternoon, he envisioned a gruesome end to his young life.
“I thought this is it, this is the end. These guys are going to cut my head off, leave my body on the street and deliver my head to the guy who ordered the hit,” Mirzali, 27, told VICE World News in a phone interview through journalist Sayqin Rustamli who served as an interpreter.
Just before the attack in the western French port city of Nantes on the 14th of March, the exiled Azerbaijani blogger had received a text message threatening to cut his tongue out, the latest in a long list of threats he’s received since becoming a vocal critic of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and his wife Mehriban Aliyeva. Aliyeva also happens to be the oil-rich country’s First Vice President, appointed by her husband in 2017.
At one point during the brutal 20-minute attack, Mirzali said his assailants tried to pry his mouth open, but he clenched his jaws shut, suspecting their intentions.
More at https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7mww9/mahammad-mirzali-attack-france-azerbaijan
