"I am risking my life." Since February 17, 2022, Mehmet Sahan has been detained in a prison cell in Azerbaijan, waiting for a chance to see the light again – or, given his severely deteriorated health, perhaps he will die there. In the meantime, the 48-year-old French-Turkish dual citizen is playing the last card he has: Turning to the press to "call out" Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on the "state of health" and the "judicial parody" of which he claims to be a victim, as well as appealing to the French state. That is what he explained in statements he sent to Le Monde in recent weeks. In this article, all his quotes come from those messages.

The fate of French nationals detained in Azerbaijan, a country known as one of the most repressive in the world, has recently made headlines. On September 23, France secured a pardon for one of its citizens, Martin Ryan, in exchange for lifting sanctions on two Russian oligarchs, a move that upset Paris's European partners. The press has also covered the case of another French national, Anass Derraz.

According to information Le Monde obtained, Sahan, whose situation had never been previously mentioned by either the French press or diplomats, is still imprisoned in silence, despite a few articles published in Azerbaijani. From May 2014 to April 2021, Sahan worked in Baku, where he ran a representative office for Thales, one of France's leading defense and electronics groups, 27% of which is state-owned. A father of four, Sahan's career seemed to be on the rise: In January 2020, just one year before his downfall, the scope of his responsibilities was expanded to include Ukraine and Georgia.