Babayan: Blog writer Alexander Lapshin unlikely to escape death in Azerbaijan
ArmInfo.Russian-Israeli blog writer Alexander Lapshin is unlikely to escape death in Azerbaijan, Spokesperson of NKR President David Babayan stated in a talk to
ArmInfo's correspondent, commenting on the Belarusian General
Prosecutor's Office decision to extradite blog writer Lapshin to
Baku. "Lapshin's extradition to Azerbaijan should not be allowed
under any circumstances, he will be tortured to death there". Babayan
thinks that one should not accept such a decision of official Minsk.
Moreover, one should not also hope for revision of the decision as in
Babayan's opinion it was "ordered".
The official representative of NKR President expressed opinion that
Minsk's decision demonstrates corruptness of political system of the
country. "In fact Lapshin has not done anything bad, he has just
visited Nagorno Karabakh. He is not a criminal, he has not committed
any horrific crime to be punished for. And Minsk's decision is just
scandalous. It is also a display of disrespect to its own people, who
have suffered a lot because of fascists. And today Belarusian
authorities want to give Lapshin in the hands of fascists", Babayan
said. Spokesperson of NKR President especially emphasized that both
Armenia and Artsakh have always demonstrated friendly attitude to
Belarusian people.
To note it has become known today that General Prosecutor's Office of
Belarus has fulfilled request of Azerbaijan's General Prosecutor's
Office on extradition of Russian and Israeli citizen, famous blog
writer Alexander Lapshin to Azerbaijan.
To remind, 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. Lapshin is included in Azerbaijan's black
list for visiting Karabakh and he was forbidden to enter Azerbaijan.
However, in June 2015 Lapshin arrived in Azerbaijan via Georgia with
his Ukrainian passport. After that Azerbaijan put him on wanted list
for violation of the law on state border and migration code of the
country.
To note, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister stated at the
annual press conference in Moscow, commenting the detention of
Russian-Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin in Minsk due to
Azerbaijan's request for his visit to Nagorno Karabakh. "Russia is
against criminalization of journalists or simply private persons
visiting any region", he said. "Second, we are against extradition of
Russian nationals arrested in any country, to third countries. We had
consular contact with Lapshin, we know that he is also an Israeli
citizen and Israeli diplomats had contact with him as well. We will
take all the steps to solve this situation within the respect to all
the rights of Russian citizen, which is also an Israeli citizen,"
Lavrov accentuated.