Azerbaijan's president pardons jailed blogger

Published September 18, 2017

Azerbaijan's president has pardoned a Russian blogger who was jailed for traveling to a separatist-controlled region of the former Soviet republic.

Alexander Lapshin was detained in Belarus last year and extradited to Azerbaijan, where he was charged for his trip to Nagorno-Karabakh via Armenia several years ago. He was sentenced to three years in prison in July.

The office of President Ilham Aliyev said Monday that he had pardoned Lapshin, who had petitioned to be extradited to Israel. Lapshin holds Russian, Ukrainian and Israeli citizenship.

Since a separatist war ended in 1994, Nagorno-Karabakh has been under the control of forces that claim to be local ethnic Armenians but that Azerbaijan alleges include Armenian troops.

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