Armenian court rejects Lapshin’s lawsuit against Belarus

PanARMENIAN.Net - On February 6, Armenia’s Administrative Court rejected blogger Alexander Lapshin’s lawsuit against Belarus. Lapshin had sought to halt repeated detentions during his entry and exit from Armenia, which he claims are politically motivated and carried out at Belarus’s request.

According to Lapshin, Belarus has issued a CIS-wide warrant for his arrest in retaliation for his criticism of human rights abuses under President Alexander Lukashenko. As a result, he has been detained multiple times and held for hours by police while crossing Armenian borders.

Commenting on the court decision on his Facebook page, Lapshin wrote that the Armenian judiciary “has protected Lukashenko’s right to persecute critics.”

He criticized Armenia’s legal alignment with authoritarian regimes, stating: “This shameful connection with criminal regimes like Belarus must end. No one wants to invest or live in a country that claims to be on a European path but arrests foreign journalists on the orders of a sanctioned dictator.”

In a separate post, Lapshin revealed that Judge Lilit Sadoyan ruled all legal claims should be directed at Belarus, since it is the country that issued the warrant.

“A brilliant conclusion reached by the honorable court,” he wrote sarcastically, “about a brutal dictatorship led by Lukashenko for 33 years, with tens of thousands of political prisoners, under EU and U.S. sanctions. My lawyers Vahagn Gasparyan and Eduard Aghajanyan were as shocked as I was.”

Lapshin said he would appeal to the Administrative Court of Appeals, and if unsuccessful, take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

“I’ve already brought Azerbaijan before the ECHR in 2021, and the court ruled them guilty of illegal arrest, torture, and attempted murder. I hope no one doubts this will go the same way,” he wrote.