Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has imprisoned nearly 100 journalists, human rights advocates, religious believers and opposition figures in the past several years, transforming his regime from a soft autocracy into one of Eurasia’s harshest police states. Few of those he has dispatched have shamed him as thoroughly, and as tellingly, as Khadija Ismayilova.

Ms. Ismayilova was sentenced to 7½ years in prison on Tuesday after one of the farcical political trials that are becoming routine in Azerbaijan, a petrostate on the Caspian Sea. Her offense was a series of hard-hitting investigative stories for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty detailing how Mr. Aliyev and his family had corruptly enriched themselves at the state’s expense. On Monday, she delivered her latest coup: a scathing dissection of her own persecution.

As the 39-year-old journalist pointed out in her final court testimony, the charges brought against her were similar to those she has leveled against Mr. Aliyev and his family in her reporting: illegal business activity, tax evasion and abuse of power. The difference, she said, is that she backed up her allegations with facts, witnesses and documents, while the case against her relied on crudely forged statements and easily disproved claims about her relationship with Radio Free Europe. Not a single witness testified against her in court.

“I am more successful in this business of finding proof than is the notorious prosecutor’s staff,” said Ms. Ismayilova, who among other scoops revealed in 2012 that Mr. Aliyev’s family was granted the rights to a lucrative gold field. “They are unable to even prepare a proper slander case.”

Though she was prevented from reading her full statement, Ms. Ismayilova’s brave speech will be an inspiration to those Azeris who still aspire to see their country follow the path of emerging democracies in the former Soviet Union. “I won’t break,” she said. “Yes, I might be in prison, but the work will continue.”

“I think the repression machine is about to collapse,” she said. “Surely, we can see this as a result of the collapse in the oil market, but there are other reasons as well. One of these reasons is us!”

The journalist’s prediction would be more likely to come true if Mr. Aliyev received less forbearance from the United States and other Western democracies, which covet the country’s oil and gas and value its relative independence from Russia. Incredibly, Azerbaijan remains a member of the Council of Europe, a regional organization that is supposed to be dedicated to promoting democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Mr. Aliyev was allowed to play host to the first European Games this summer.

Ms. Ismayilova’s long sentence prompted an expression of concern — but not a condemnation — from the State Department, which called for her release but offered no indication that Mr. Aliyev or state prosecutors will suffer any tangible consequences for their repression. They should.

Guardian and Washington Post win Pulitzer prize for NSA revelations
Ed Pilkington in New York

Pair awarded highest accolade in US journalism, winning Pulitzer prize for public service for stories on NSA surveillance
The Guardian revealed the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records 10 months ago based on Edward Snowden’s leaks. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The Guardian and the Washington Post have been awarded the highest accolade in US journalism, winning the Pulitzer prize for public service for their groundbreaking articles on the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities based on the leaks of Edward Snowden.

The award, announced in New York on Monday, comes 10 months after the Guardian published the first report based on the leaks from Snowden, revealing the agency’s bulk collection of US citizens’ phone records.

The Pulitzer committee praised the Guardian’s for its “revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, helping through aggressive reporting to spark a debate about the relationship between the government and the public over issues of security and privacy”.

In the series of articles that ensued, teams of journalists at the Guardian and the Washington Post published the most substantial disclosures of US government secrets since the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam war in 1971.

At the Guardian, the reporting was led by Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and film-maker Laura Poitras, and at the Washington Post by Barton Gellman, who also co-operated with Poitras. All four journalists were honoured with a George Polk journalism award last week for their work on the NSA story.

The NSA revelations have reverberated around the world and sparked a debate in the US over the balance between national security and personal privacy. On the back of the disclosures, President Obama ordered a White House review into data surveillance, a number of congressional reform bills have been introduced, and protections have begun to be put in place to safeguard privacy for foreign leaders and to increase scrutiny over the NSA’s mass data collection.

Among the disclosures were:

· the NSA’s mass dragnet of phone records of millions of Americans

· the program codenamed Prism used by the NSA and its UK counterpart GCHQ to gain back-door entry into the data of nine giant internet companies including Google and Facebook

· the cracking of internet encryption by the NSA and GCHQ that undermined personal security for web users ;

· NSA surveillance of phone calls made by 35 world leaders.

The coverage of the Snowden leaks presented a particularly thorny issue for the 19-strong panel of journalists, academics and writers who recommend the winners. The stream of disclosures invoked strong and polarised reactions in the US and around the world.

In January, Obama said that the debate on the acceptable limits of government surveillance prompted by the articles “will make us stronger”. But other prominent US politicians such as Mike Rogers, Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, have suggested journalism based on Snowden’s leaks was tantamount to dealing in stolen property.

Snowden has been charged with three offences in the US. He is the eighth person to be charged with breaking the 1917 Espionage Act by the Obama administration – more than all the prosecutions brought under previous presidents combined.

The Guardian’s US operation, headquartered in New York, was incorporated as an American company in 2011 and recognised last year by the Pulitzer board as a US news outlet eligible to be considered for its prizes.

Last month editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger was given a special award at the European press awards; earlier this month the Guardian was named newspaper of the year in the UK; and there it has been awarded other prizes for online and investigative journalism in Germany, Spain and the US.

The Pulitzers have been bestowed since 1917, at the bequest of the legendary newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer who established the honour in his will as a means of encouraging publicly-spirited journalism. The awards have shifted and grown over the years to reflect the modern publishing landscape and today stands at 22 categories, including 14 journalism awards and seven gongs for books, drama and music. All the awards are administered by Columbia University.