Minsk Court Approved Extradition of Lapshin to Azerbaijan

The Minsk City Court on January 26 upheld the decision of the Deputy Prosecutor General of Belarus Alexei Stuk on the extradition of a Russian-Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin to Azerbaijan, Deutsche Welle said.

 The blogger’s defense said it intends to appeal to the Supreme Court, which can be done within 10 days.

  Recall that a citizen of Russia and Israel Alexander Lapshin was detained in Minsk on December 14 at the request of Azerbaijan. The blogger was declared an international arrest warrant on charges of illegal visit to Nagorno-Karabakh and the actions against the statehood of Azerbaijan.

Lapshin in different periods visited Nagorno-Karabakh, where he made anti-Azerbaijani statements and called on to recognize the independence of Karabakh.

Then he entered the territory of Azerbaijan on forged documents.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry called on the Belarusian authorities with a request not to extradite Lapshin to Azerbaijan. A similar request was addressed to Minsk by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Being detained in Minsk, Lapshin wrote an apology to Ilham Aliyev. However, as claimed by the Armenian lawyers of Lapshin, the blogger did not apologize for visiting Nagorno-Karabakh and only wrote that he was sorry about what had happened. -02D-