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Azerbaijan’s president pardons blogger Lapshin

Russian-Israeli travel blogger Alexander Lapshin was sentenced to three years behind bars

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev Mikhail Metzel/TASS

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev

© Mikhail Metzel/TASS

BAKU, September 11. /TASS/. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed an order on Monday on pardoning Russian-Israeli travel blogger Alexander Lapshin, who was sentenced to three years behind bars.

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The decision on pardoning enters into force on Monday.

Lapshin was sentenced by the Baku court on grave crimes on July 20, 2017 over his visit to Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed border region between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Lapshin was detained in the Belarusian capital of Minsk in December 2016 at Baku’s request. He was flown to Baku on February 7 and handed over to the Azerbaijani State Security Service. Azerbaijan’s prosecutors opened criminal cases against him envisaging jail terms of between five and eight years.

Nagorno-Karabakh sought independence from Azerbaijan at the end of the 1980s, which resulted in a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia that claimed the lives of 25,000-30,000 people between 1988 and 1994. Since then, the territory has been controlled by Armenia.

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