Interfax - Russia & CIS General Newswire July 27, 2017 Thursday 4:26 PM MSK Blogger Lapshin writes official request for his extradition from Azerbaijan to Israel - lawyer BAKU. July 27 Blogger Alexander Lapshin, who was sentenced to three years in prison in Azerbaijan, has written an official request for his extradition to Israel, Eduard Chernin, a lawyer for the blogger, said. "Alexander Lapshin has written a request asking for his extradition to Israel. That request will be sent to the Justice Ministry," Chernin told Interfax. The Baku court for grave crimes on July 20 sentenced blogger Lapshin, a citizen of Russia and Israel, who was charged with illegally visiting Nagorno-Karabakh, to three years in jail, an Interfax correspondent reported from the courtroom. According to the court decision, Lapshin will serve his sentence in a general-security prison. Lapshin refused to appeal. He asked the Israeli embassy in Baku to seek his extradition to Israel. According to earlier reports, Lapshin did not admit his guilt at the trial. He admitted, however, that Nagorno-Karabakh was a territory of Azerbaijan. He said he had visited Karabakh as a tourist and had no political purposes. 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 from Minsk to Baku on the same day. Lapshin was put on the 'black list' for having visited Nagorno-Karabakh without the consent of Azerbaijani 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.