Fatima Karimova, a 20-year-old woman from Azerbaijan, was found dead in her rented apartment in Tbilisi on 26 June by the Georgian police. She is believed to have been the victim of an ‘honour killing’ carried out by her cousin, Emin Aliyev, with the Interior Ministry investigating the case under charges of intentional killing.

The news quickly gained traction on Georgian social media after human rights activist Baia Pataria posted about it on Wednesday. Pataria later told Civil Georgia that local women’s rights organisation Sapari had appealed to Georgia’s Prosecutor’s Office to be admitted to the proceedings as the victim’s legal representative in Georgia.

Separately, the Interior Ministry told OC Media that they could not provide any further details beyond the charges, while Karimova’s sister, Zuleikha Karimova, told OC Media that the Georgian police had told her Emin Aliyev had fled Georgia for Turkey, and that a search was ongoing.

Zuleikha Karimova told OC Media that in mid-May, Fatima had left her home in Azerbaijan’s Aghjabadi district for Tbilisi to live with her boyfriend, Kanan Aliyev (no relation to Emin Aliyev). This caused uproar in the family as Fatima was reportedly engaged to another man, Orkhan Hasanov. When Fatima arrived in Tbilisi, however, her boyfriend reportedly turned on her, tearing up her passport, beating her, and abandoning her at the hotel they were staying at.

‘My sister couldn’t return to Azerbaijan. I offered to send her money, but she said it was impossible because she thought that her passport was damaged and with this document, the passport control officer would not allow her to exit the country’.

At this point, a local woman, Inna Mkrtchyan, found Fatima.

‘She was in a harsh condition, her hands were burnt by cigarette butts, which she said her boyfriend had done to her’, Mkrtchyan told OC Media. ‘She asked me to take her to the Azerbaijani Embassy’.

Mkrtchyan added that since it was Sunday, the embassy was closed for the weekend. Instead, she took Fatima to a friend’s house. She also said that Fatima Karimova had a piece of paper with three phone numbers on it, including that of her cousin, Emin Aliyev, who arrived on 3 June, ostensibly to rent Fatima an apartment in Tbilisi for a few months, waiting until the family’s anger died down, after which he would help her return to Azerbaijan.

However, on 26 June, Zuleikha Karimova tried to reach her sister by phone, but was unable to make contact. She then asked their cousin Emin Aliyev to check up on her — he later claimed that Fatima was fine, but that she had not let him into her new flat.

Emin Aliyev then stopped responding to Zuleikha Karimova’s calls and messages, after which she turned to Mkrtchyan, asking her to check up on her sister.

Mkrtchyan told OC Media that the landlord also called her phone and knocked at her door, and that her neighbours said they heard noise coming from Fatima’s flat at night.

‘I was worried and went to their address in [the Tbilisi neighbourhood of] Varketili, and when I arrived, I asked the neighbour whether he had seen Fatima. He said that he had seen her in the morning, on 25  June, when she returned from the store. And when I asked the neighbour about Emin Aliyev, we learnt that he left at 05:00 on 26 June, and at that time understood that something happened’, Mkrtchyan said.

‘My sister begged him not to kill her’

According to Zuleikha Karimova, Emin Aliyev had been abusing her sister, with his behaviour becoming more aggressive when he was drunk.

‘Fatima said that one day he was drunk and standing next to her while she was washing her face in the bathroom, and when she turned, she saw him with a knife. My sister begged him not to kill her, and at that very moment, he cut her hand [with the knife]’.

Zuleikha Karimova said that later Emin Aliyev apologised, crying and saying that he was drunk and did not want to kill her.

In private conversations between the two sisters, which OC Media has viewed, Fatima Karimova wrote that her boyfriend, Kanan Aliyev, was at the same time blackmailing her, threatening that he would send intimate footage to her uncles if she blocked him.

Zuleikha Karimova believes their cousin Emin Aliyev found out about these videos, and believed that Fatima had ruined the family’s reputation.

‘Fatima told me that our relatives ordered Emin Aliyev to kill her’, Zuleikha Karimova said, adding that in the last conversation with their uncle Elshan Sultanov, during which she informed him about Fatima’s death, he responded that ‘it should end with that’.