Minsk does not plan on arguing either with Azerbaijan or Armenia, including with respect to the extradition of blogger Alexander Lapshin.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko stated the abovementioned at his talk with Armen Khachatryan, the Ambassador of Armenia to Belarus, BelTA news agency of Belarus reported citing the press service of Lukashenko.
“We [i.e. Armenians and Belarusians] have been close peoples; we will remain as such,” the Belarusian president stated on Tuesday, in capital city Minsk. “Armenia has a different attitude toward Azerbaijan, but they [i.e. Azerbaijanis], too, are our [i.e. Belarusians] close peoples. Why should we [i.e. Belarusians] fight or argue with Azerbaijan or Armenia? Perhaps Azerbaijan and Armenia will need us one day.
“Do you remember Lapshin? Listen, what does Armenia have to do with it? And Armenia never said anything about Lapshin. He was wanted by a country: Azerbaijan. When they detained him here [in Belarus], I thought why did they detain him here; let him go where it’s needed. But they detained him; the Interpol knew [about it]. We informed, according to procedure, as non-breakers of the law. To whom had we hand him over? To whoever had declared him wanted.”
But the Belarusian President added that, “no one wanted to take him.”
“And then they began to play this trump card,” said Alexander Lukashenko. “He is a citizen of three countries; [but] none of these countries made a claim for him.
“And that’s why there are specific contexts in any matter, and they consider the matter in a way that is convenient to someone.”
After his visits to Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) in 2011 and 2012, Israeli Russian blogger and journalist Alexander Lapshin was “blacklisted” by Azerbaijan.
In June 2016, however, he paid a visit to Azerbaijan--but with a Ukrainian passport--and, subsequently, he published several articles criticizing the Azerbaijani authorities.
Afterward, Azerbaijan issued an international search for this famous blogger. On December 15, 2016, Lapshin was detained in the Belarusian capital city of Minsk, and based on this search.
On January 26 of the current year, the Minsk city court dismissed the blogger's appeal of the Belarusian General Prosecutor's Office decision to extradite him to Azerbaijan.
On February 7, the Supreme Court of Belarus dismissed the appeals that were filed into this case, and upheld the aforesaid decision by the General Prosecutor’s Office.
And on the evening of the same day, Belarus extradited Alexander Lapshin to the Azerbaijani capital city of Baku, where he was taken into custody.
