Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a pardon Monday for Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin, who was sentenced to three years in prison for having entered the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The pardon went into effect immediately.
A Russian blogger who was jailed after traveling to a breakaway region of Azerbaijan has petitioned to be extradited to Israel, his lawyer said on July 26.
Blogger Alexander Lapshin, who illegally visited the occupied Azerbaijani territories and entered into a criminal conspiracy with the Armenians living in the occupied territories, was sentenced to three years in prison by the Baku Court on Grave Crimes.
The trial of Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin continued Tuesday in the capital of Azerbaijan, where the Baku Court of Grave Crimes heard testimony from residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory disputed between two former Soviet republics, Azerbaijan and Armenia and which the Russian-Israeli blogger is charged with visiting and claiming that it belongs to Armenia.
Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin was extradited from Belarus to Azerbaijan on Tuesday, a Foreign Ministry source confirmed, two months after being arrested for criticizing Azerbaijan and its president.
The Supreme Court of Belarus ruled today to leave the decision of the Prosecutor General’s office on blogger Alexander Lapshin’s extradition to Azerbaijan in force, RIA Novosti reports.
The Minsk District Court rejected Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin’s appeal against the Belarussian Ministry of Justice’s decision to extradite him to Azerbaijan on Thursday.
Russia will act to prevent the extradition of Russian-Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin to Azerbaijan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press conference on Tuesday.
Officials in the Israeli Foreign Ministry fear Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin, who has been under arrest for almost a month in Belarus, may be extradited to Azerbaijan in the next few days.