An aide to the head of Azerbaijan's national firefighting service has been dismissed and arrested following the leak of an "intimate" video that authorities say is one of numerous sexual encounters he secretly recorded on the service computer in his office.
The Prosecutor-General's Office said on August 18 that it had launched an "intensive" investigation after a video recently began circulating on social media showing a uniformed man locking his office door at the Emergency Situations Ministry before kissing and fondling a similarly uniformed woman.
Prosecutors said Colonel Zaur Mirzayev, an assistant to the chief of the Emergency Situations Ministry's State Fire Protection Service, had been detained the previous day for suspected criminal offenses including abuse of office, the illegal distribution of pornographic materials, and violations of privacy.
They alleged that Mirzayev "installed a hidden camera on his service computer" and acted "with the dirty personal intention of satisfying his sexual desire" and feeding "other addictions."
Neither Mirzayev, his lawyers, nor ministry officials were initially available for comment.
Over the course of 2013-2019, prosecutors said, he "took video and photo shoots while having sexual intercourse and other forms of intimate relations in the office, and caused the illegal pornographic materials to spread on the Internet in August 2022."
The timestamp on the shared video suggests it was recorded in 2014.
It is unclear whether the videos were leaked or posted by Mirzayev himself.
The investigators concluded that his actions damaged the ministry's reputation.
The leaks and investigation could prove an embarrassment to the emergency situations minister, Colonel General Kamaladdin Heydarov, who is among the richest and most powerful of the elites surrounding President Ilham Aliyev and his dynastic regime.
The identity of the woman in the video was not initially clear, although at least one Facebook user group suggested she was the head of another department within the same ministry.
