By Diyar Guldogan
ANKARA (AA) – The Feb. 7 decision to extradite a blogger from Belarus to Azerbaijan for alleged illegal visits to occupied Karabakh is legal, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Turkey insisted on Tuesday.
Faig Baghirov told Anadolu Agency: “Alexander Lapshin, who holds Russian, Israeli and Ukrainian citizenship, paid illegal visits to occupied Azerbaijani territories in April 2011 and in Oct. 2012, violating Azerbaijan’s laws on state borders and passports.”
Baghirov also said Lapshin had made statements against Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.
Baku issued an arrest warrant for Lapshin over his unauthorized travel and blog posts.
Lapshin was detained in Belarus last December; the country’s Supreme Court approved his extradition to Azerbaijan on Feb. 7.
“The issue related to Alexander Lapshin is purely legal in nature and must be considered from a legal standpoint,” said Baghirov.
Baghirov said Lapshin’s case indicated that Armenia fraudulently attracted foreign nationals to travel to Azerbaijan’s occupied territories and tried to turn them into propaganda tools.
He said Azerbaijan always demonstrated its “unequivocal” position with regard to people who violate national and international laws.
“The extradition of blogger Alexander Lapshin to Azerbaijan shows the political will and ability of the Azerbaijan’s leadership to take the boldest steps to defend state interests,” he added.
The ambassador also described Lapshin’s extradition as a “triumph of international law” and showed that traveling to occupied Karabakh is not a trip to a tourism zone as presented by Armenia but a criminal offense.
Azerbaijan and Armenia remain in dispute over the occupied Karabakh region.
Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan in 1991 with Armenian military support, and a peace process has yet to be implemented.
Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a six-year war over occupied Karabakh in the early 1980s until a 1994 ceasefire.
Since the end of the war in 1994, Armenia and Azerbaijan have held talks under the supervision of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Minsk Group.
