Iran responded to Baku’s notes on detained Azeri citizens, Foreign Ministry spokesman Elman Abdullayev said.

“Tehran stated that the detained Azerbaijani citizens are accused of illegal activities,” Trend News quoted Abdullayev as saying.

According to him, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry asked Iran enable a meeting with the detained citizens, as stipulated by the Vienna Convention on Human Rights.

Azerbaijan will also insist on providing the necessary legal aid to detained persons, Abdullayev said.

Research Fellow of the Nizami Ganjavi Institute of Literature, scientist-orientalist Khalida Khalid and her assistant Shamhal Huseynov were arrested on April 30 in Tabriz by the employees of the Ministry of Information Security and Intelligence of Iran, Iranian media reported earlier.