Israel will continue efforts to have blogger Alexander Lapshin extradited if he is convicted, Justice Minister of Israel Ayelet Shaked told Interfax.

“Israel has made efforts and continues to make efforts to help Lapshin, who is a citizen of both Russia and Israel. If he is convicted in Azerbaijan, we will do our best for Lapshin to serve the sentence in Israel,” she said. 

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.