Belarus delivered blogger Lapshin to Azerbaijan. He was given three years in prison

Aleksandr Lapshin was sentenced to three years in a penal colony for visiting Nagorno-Karabakh.

Azerbaijani authorities had charged the blogger with “open calls against the state” and “illegal crossing of the state border.”

Speaking in court, the blogger said that “he is only guilty before the Azerbaijani people in the moral, not in the legal field.”

“I understand how important Karabakh is for Azerbaijan,” Lapshin said. – Under no circumstances did I enter into a criminal connection with the Armenian authorities.”

At the end of 2016, Lapshin was detained in Minsk at the request of Azerbaijan, which had put him it in the “black list” for visiting Nagorno-Karabakh Republic without approval from the authorities.

On February 7, the blogger, accompanied by employees of Azerbaijan State Security Service, was brought to Baku, despite the protests of Russia and Israel (Lapshin is a citizen of both countries). Angry voices were also heard in Armenia: MPs offered to withdraw their ambassador from Belarus.

On February 8, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev telephoned President of Belarus Alyaksandr Lukashenka and thanked him for delivering the blogger.