Protest held in front of Belarusian Embassy to Armenia in support for blog writer Lapshin
ArmInfo. A protest was held in front of the Belarusian Embassy to Armenia in support for Russian-Israeli blog writer Alexander Lapshin, who was arrested by the Belarusian authorities on Baku's demand.
The protesters demanded to meet with Belarusian Ambassador to Armenia Igor Nazaruk for handing over a letter to him, however the diplomat refused to meet them. Youth Branch of ARF Dashanktsutyun and "Nikol Aghbalyan" student union initiated the protest. The letter particularly reads: "Upon Azerbaijan's demand citizen of Israel and Russia Alexander Lapshin was detained in Minsk on December 15. He is accused of visiting Nagorno Karabakh without receiving 'permission' from Azerbaijan. Lapshin is included in Baku's black list and a criminal case is pressed against him for violating territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. We demand from the law enforcement bodies of Belarus not to give in to Azerbaijan's deceptive accusation and respect territorial integrity of Nagorno-Karabakh and people's right to self- determination. We urge Belarusian authorities to take an unbiased and comprehensive approach".
Earlier the Chamber of Advocates of Armenia formed a professional group, which found Alexander Lapshin's extradition on the demand of the chief prosecutor of the Republic of Azerbaijan intolerable as it contradicts to the claims of the international and intrastate legal acts.
In the middle of December the citizen of the Russian Federation Alexander Lapshin has been arrested in the Republic of Belarus with the purpose of extradition on the demand of Azerbaijan for visiting Nagorno-Karabakh and making notes about those visitations in his blog.
General Prosecutor's Office of Belarus informed earlier that the issue of extraditing Lapshin to Azerbaijan is being studied but no decision has been made yet.