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.