YEREVAN. – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is waiting for the Azerbaijani authorities’ response to the case of blogger Alexander Lapshin.

At a press conference on Tuesday, the blogger said the ECHR had begun to consider the petition and started the communication process.

As per Lapshin, the Azerbaijani authorities have been given three months to submit documents.

The blogger stressed that Baku had made attempts to give bribe and put political pressure which, however, failed.

“It will hit them [Azerbaijani authorities] when the court will make a decision in connection with the attempted murder,” Lapshin noted. “By money laundering and bribing MPs, they themselves have distorted their image.”

In the blogger’s view, the story about him was fabricated from the very beginning so as to distract some of the Azerbaijani population from domestic issues.

“They [Azerbaijan] don’t need Karabakh; they [just] need a conflict and an ‘explanation’ for the existing problems,” he said. “If there were no Lapshin, it would have been necessary to fabricate him.”

At the same time, however, Alexander Lapshin did not underestimate the Azerbaijani authorities.

“They are dangerous and improper,” the blogger concluded.

In late 2016, Israeli, Russian, and Ukrainian citizen blogger Alexander Lapshin was detained in Belarus, and based on his international arrest warrant by Azerbaijan. Baku had “blacklisted” him for visiting Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) without getting Azerbaijan’s “consent.”

Subsequently, Belarus extradited Lapshin to Azerbaijan, and a court in capital city Baku sentenced him to three years in prison.

But on September 11, 2017 Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on granting pardon to this blogger.

Lapshin left Azerbaijan on September 14 and went to Israel.

It turned out, however, that Alexander Lapshin had been close to committing suicide in the Baku prison.