Interfax - Russia & CIS General Newswire Tuesday 5:25 PM MSK Blogger Lapshin to stand trial in Azerbaijan BAKU. June 13 The case of Alexander Lapshin, who is charged in Azerbaijan with illegal crossing of the border for visiting Karabakh, has been submitted to a court, the Azerbaijani media said. "The files of the criminal case against blogger Alexander Lapshin were submitted to the court. Alovsyat Abbasov, a judge of the Baku Grave Crimes Court, was appointed the judge in his case," the media reports said. "The preliminary hearing in the case of blogger Lapshin will take place on June 22," his lawyer Eduard Chernin told Interfax. According to Baku, Lapshin, a citizen of Russia and Israel, illegally visited Nagorno-Karabakh without obtaining official permission from Azerbaijan in April 2011 and October 2012, thus violating the provisions of the laws 'On the State Border of the Republic of Azerbaijan' and 'On Passports'. Apart from that, Lapshin called for the recognition of the independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic on social networking sites on April 6, 2016 and June 29, 2016. Lapshin was included in the 'black list' for having visited Nagorno-Karabakh without the consent of Azeri authorities. Such people cannot enter Azerbaijan. However, Lapshin was able to enter Azerbaijan through Georgia in June 2015, producing a Ukrainian passport with a different spelling of his name. The investigative department for grave crimes of the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General's Office opened a criminal case on charges of repeated public calls against the state and illegal crossing of Azerbaijan's state border. A person convicted on these charges may get a sentence of five to eight years in prison. On December 16, 2016 it emerged that Lapshin had been detained in Belarus at the request of Azerbaijan. The Belarusian Supreme Court rejected Lapshin's appeal against his extradition to Azerbaijan on February 7. He was extradited the same day. mg ng kl