Russian-Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin has for the first time commented on his time at an Azerbaijani jail after he was sentenced to three years in prison for visiting Nagorno Karabakh.

Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev on Monday, September 12 signed a decree to pardon Lapshin.

"On the night of September 11, when I was already in the prison cell, the door pulled open. I did not even have time to stand up when some figures grabbed me by the neck and hands and punched me in the ribs. I do not remember anything afterwards. Then I remember waking up at a Baku hospital, with two broken teeth and hematomas all over my ribs," Lapshin said in his blog.

Also, the blogger categorically denied he had made a suicide attempt shortly before being released from prison.

Lapshin was sentenced by the Baku court on grave crimes on July 20, 2017 over his visit to Karabakh.

The blogger 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.