STEPANAKERT. – Blogger Alexander Lapshin has become the victim of a witch-hunt.

Davit Babayan, Head of the Central Information Department of the Office of the President of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR/Artsakh) and Deputy Head of the NKR President’s Office, stated the aforesaid commenting—at the request of Armenian News-NEWS.am—on Azerbaijan’s attempts to keep Artsakh under an information blockade, and the European organizations’ demeanor towards these attempts.

“The whole process of Lapshin’s arrest and extradition was being carried out with flagrant violations of international law, whereas the European organizations turned a blind eye to all this,” noted Babayan. “Sadly, corruption has penetrated into many organizations; such apathy will not lead to anything good. (…). Europe better not forget about principles.”    

In his words, Azerbaijan had to exert considerable efforts to have Lapshin extradited from Belarus.

“In the meantime, [Belarus President Alexander] Lukashenko personally had come to congratulate Junior Eurovision [Song Contest 2010] winner Vova Arzumanyan, learning that he is from Nagorno-Karabakh,” stressed the deputy head of the NKR President’s Office.

In December 2016, Israeli Russian blogger Alexander Lapshin was detained in the Belarusian capital city of Minsk. The reason was his being on the international wanted persons’ list, due to a search which Azerbaijan had declared. Baku accuses him of visiting Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) without its consent.

And on February 7 of the current year, Belarus extradited the blogger to the Azerbaijani capital city of Baku, where he was taken into custody.