The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the verdict of blogger Alexander Lapshin.
"Alexander Lapshin should not be in jail for traveling to a disputed region," CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. "We call on authorities in Baku not to contest the journalist's appeal and to release him unconditionally."
It was reported earlier that the Baku court sentenced blogger Alexander Lapshin to three years in jail on charges of public appeals to violent capture of authority and violation of law on infringement of Azerbaijan’s territorial. The verdict was announced during the hearing on Thursday.
The prosecutor earlier asked the court to sentence Lapshin for a period of 6.6 years in prison.
After his visits to Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) in 2011 and 2012, blogger and journalist Alexander Lapshin—who is a citizen of Russia, Israel, and several other countries—was “blacklisted” by Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan issued an international search for this famous blogger. On December 15, 2016, Lapshin was detained in the Belarusian capital city of Minsk, and was later extradited to Baku.