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The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has been named the winner of the 2015 Tom Renner Award by Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. The award was presented for The Khadija Project, which continues the work of imprisoned Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova, the OCCRP reports.

An OCCRP partner, Ismayilova  was sentenced in 2015 on what many believe to be politically motivated charges. She had exposed many examples of corruption among the ruling elites of Azerbaijan, the OCCRP writes.

“This project has meant more to us than anything we published last year. We all live with a gnawing discomfort that one of our own sits in prison and it’s not fair,” said Drew Sullivan, the director of the OCCRP. “This award goes to Khadija and we won’t rest and we won’t stop reporting until she is released.”

When arrested in December 2014, Ismayilova made a specific request that her colleagues continue her work. The resulting project has been a collaboration between journalists and organisations from several different countries. Partners on the project include RFE/RL, Meydan TV, Sveriges Television, TT News Agency, the Investigative Reporting Center of Italy (IRPI) and Bellingcat, the OCCRP notes.

This is far not the first prize the journalist has received sitting in an Azerbaijani prison. Recently, the Human Rights Watch honoured her with Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism, which is meant to celebrate the valour of individuals who put their lives on the line to protect the dignity and rights of others.

According to Azerbaijani Turan news agency, Intigam Aliyev, the chairman of the Legal Education Society of Azerbaijan, was named the Civil Rights Defender of the Year 2016 by Civil Rights Defenders. As Intigam Aliyev cannot leave the country because of a conviction, his son Necmin received the award for him on 7 April in Stockholm.

The agency writes that the rights defender was arrested on 8 August 2014 and sentenced to 7.5 years in prison on charges of illegal entrepreneurship, embezzlement and tax evasion. Later on, he was given a suspended sentence. Intigam Aliyev refutes all the charges against him and says his arrest was a response to his human rights activities, particularly for helping citizens to file applications to the European Court of Human Rights. Amnesty International considers him a prisoner of conscience.

On 1 September 2015, Baku Court of Grave Crimes handed down a 7.6 years prison sentence to the Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova. The court found her guilty of the Articles 179 (embezzlement and misappropriation), 192 (illegal business), 213 (tax evasion) and 308 (abuse of power) of the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, Ismayilova was cleared from the article 125 (incitement to commit suicide) of the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan. Earlier, the public prosecutor, Ramazan Hadiyev, had claimed 9 years of imprisonment for Khadija Ismayilova. The journalist was detained on 5 December 2014, which was followed by a wave of condemning statements by a number of international organisations and influential representatives from various states, who claimed her arrest was politically motivated.