Municipal court of Minsk dismissed Russian-Israeli blog writer Lapshin`s complaint related to his extradition on Baku`s demand
ArmInfo.Municipal Court of Minsk has left unchanged Belarusian Prosecutor General's decision on Russian-Israeli blog writer Alexander Lapshin's extradition on Baku's demand for his visit to Nagorno Karabakh.
Minsk municipal court has discussed the complaint for several hours at the session on January 26 and dismissed the complaint explaining its decision with
lawfulness of the decision made by the Prosecutor's Office. Chairman
of Armenia's Chamber of Advocates Ara Zohrabyan stated that there is
only one option left -to apply to the Supreme Court of Belarus within
10 days.
To remind, on January 20 General Prosecutor's Office of Belarus
fulfilled request of Azerbaijan's General Prosecutor's Office on
extradition of Russian and Israeli citizen famous blog writer
Alexander Lapshin to Azerbaijan. 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.