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9 February 2017

Trend

Belarus has fulfilled its obligations under the international treaty on rendering legal assistance when extraditing blogger Alexander Lapshin to Azerbaijan, Dmitry Mironchik, press secretary of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, head of the Department of Information at the ministry, said Feb. 9, BelTA reported.

“Extradition is a purely legal issue,” said Mironchik. “Treaties must be respected.”

On Feb. 7, Lapshin was extradited to Azerbaijan from Belarus.

Earlier, the Supreme Court of Belarus rejected the complaint filed by Lapshin’s lawyer regarding his extradition to Azerbaijan.

On Jan. 26, Alexei Stuk, deputy prosecutor general of Belarus, issued a ruling on Lapshin’s extradition to Azerbaijan. The Minsk City Court upheld this decision.

Alexander Lapshin is a citizen of several countries and has had a criminal conspiracy with Armenians living in the occupied Azerbaijani territories. He also illegally visited these territories.

Lapshin is accused of violating Azerbaijani laws on state border in April 2011 and October 2012.

In order to promote the illegal regime created in the Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenia, Lapshin presented Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh as an “independent state” on his social media account, and supporting the “independence” of the unrecognized regime he made public incitements aimed at violating Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity on April 6 and June 29, 2016.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.