Interfax - Russia & CIS Military Newswire July 20, 2017 Thursday 1:50 PM MSK Azerbaijan convicts blogger Lapshin to 3 years in prison for traveling to Karabakh BAKU. July 20 The Baku Court on Grave Crimes on Thursday found prominent blogger Alexander Lapshin, a citizen of Russia and Israel, guilty of illegally visiting Nagorno-Karabakh and sentenced him to three years in a general security penitentiary, an Interfax correspondent reported from the courtroom. The prosecution had asked the court to sentence Lapshin to six years and six months in prison last Friday. Delivering his last plea, Lapshin regretted his visit to Nagorno-Karabakh without Baku's consent. "I have to apologize to the Azerbaijani people only because my actions caused their moral sufferings. I understand how much Nagorno-Karabakh is important to Azerbaijan. I have never established any criminal links with the Armenian government," Lapshin said. He said he hoped the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh would be settled through preserving Azerbaijan's integrity. Lapshin's lawyer Eduard Chernin asked the court to acquit his client. During the proceedings, Lapshin pleaded not guilty of the charges brought against him and said that Nagorno-Karabakh is Azerbaijan's territory. He said he had traveled to Nagorno-Karabakh for purely touristic purposes and his trips did not have any political agenda. According to Baku, Lapshin, a Russian-Israeli citizen, illegally visited Nagorno-Karabakh without obtaining Azerbaijan's official permission in April 2011 and October 2012, thus violating the laws on Azerbaijan's state border and on passports. Apart from that, Lapshin called for the recognition of the independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic on social networks on April 6, 2016 and June 29, 2016. Lapshin was put on 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 of these charges may receive 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 on the same day. Va kf ng