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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed an order on Monday on pardoning Russian-Israeli travel blogger Alexander Lapshin, who was sentenced to three years behind bars, Tass agency reported. According to the source, the decision on pardoning enters into force on Monday.

Lapshin was sentenced by the Baku court on grave crimes on July 20, 2017 over his visit to Nagorno-Karabakh,

To remind, Lapshin was detained in the Belarusian capital of Minsk in December 2016 at Baku’s request. He was flown to Baku on February 7 and handed over to the Azerbaijani State Security Service.
Azerbaijani prosecutors launched a criminal case into “repeated public anti-state calls” and what they claimed as “illegal crossing of Azerbaijan’s state border.”

The extradition and persecution against Lapshin was widely slammed by international community as a gross violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of speech and movement.