Blogger detained in Minsk apologizes to Azerbaijan's president

PanARMENIAN.Net - Alexander Lapshin, a citizen of both Russia and Israel, who has been detained the Belarusian capital in 2016 has written a letter of apology to Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev over his visit to Nagorno Karabakh without consent of Baku, Consul of Israeli embassy to Minsk Yulia Rachinski-Spivakov said Friday, January 20.

Earlier in the day, the Prosecutor General's Office of Belarus announced that it had decided to extradite the blogger on Azerbaijan's request.

"[On January 18, Lapshin signed] a letter of apology addressed to Azerbaijan's president… In the letter he asked pardon for his activities in the light of the fact that naivety was behind the actions he conducted. The letter has been notarized by the consul of Israeli embassy to Belarus and sent via our embassy to Baku for consideration by the administration of Azerbaijan's president," Rachinski-Spivakov said, as quoted by the BelaPAN news agency.

She added that Lapshin's mother, who was also Israel's citizen, had also requested Aliyev to pardon her son.

In mid-December 2016, Lapshin wrote that he had been detained in Minsk on the request of Azerbaijan, where he was included in a black list for a visit to Karabakh "without consent of the Azerbaijani authorities." After the visit, he had entered Azerbaijan through Georgia using a Ukrainian passport. Baku accused the blogger of violation of country's legislation and put him on an international wanted list.