ArmInfo.Municipal Court of Minsk has left unchanged Belarusian Prosecutor General's decision on Russian-Israeli blog writer Alexander Lapshin's extradition on Baku's demand for his visit to Nagorno Karabakh.
Minsk municipal court has discussed the complaint for several hours at the session on January 26 and dismissed the complaint explaining its decision with lawfulness of the decision made by the Prosecutor's Office. Chairman of Armenia's Chamber of Advocates Ara Zohrabyan stated that there is only one option left -to apply to the Supreme Court of Belarus within 10 days.
To remind, on January 20 General Prosecutor's Office of Belarus fulfilled request of Azerbaijan's General Prosecutor's Office on extradition of Russian and Israeli citizen famous blog writer Alexander Lapshin to Azerbaijan. In the middle of December the citizen of the Russian Federation Alexander Lapshin has been arrested in the Republic of Belarus with the purpose of extradition on the demand of Azerbaijan for visiting Nagorno-Karabakh and making notes about those visitations in his blog. Lapshin is included in Azerbaijan's black list for visiting Karabakh and he was forbidden to enter Azerbaijan. However, in June 2015 Lapshin arrived in Azerbaijan via Georgia with his Ukrainian passport. After that Azerbaijan put him on wanted list for violation of the law on state border and migration code of the country.
To note, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister stated at the annual press conference in Moscow, commenting the detention of Russian-Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin in Minsk due to Azerbaijan's request for his visit to Nagorno Karabakh. "Russia is against criminalization of journalists or simply private persons visiting any region", he said. "Second, we are against extradition of Russian nationals arrested in any country, to third countries. We had consular contact with Lapshin, we know that he is also an Israeli citizen and Israeli diplomats had contact with him as well. We will take all the steps to solve this situation within the respect to all the rights of Russian citizen, which is also an Israeli citizen," Lavrov accentuated.