Alexander Valerievich Lapshin (
Hebrew: אלכסנדר לפשין,
Russian: Александр Валерьевич Лапшин, born 4 February 1976) is a Soviet-born travel blogger and journalist.[1] Lapshin holds Ukrainian and Israeli citizenship.[2] In 2016 Lapshin was arrested in
Minsk at the request of the Azerbaijani authorities and extradited to
Baku due to a visit to
Nagorno-Karabakh. On May 20, 2021, the
European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled on the blogger's complaint against the Republic of Azerbaijan, finding the country's authorities responsible for the illegal arrest, torture and attempted murder against Lapshin.[3]
Biography
Alexander Lapshin was born in 1976 in
Sverdlovsk (now
Yekaterinburg), to a Russian father and Jewish-Ukrainian mother. At the age of 13, he emigrated to Israel with his family. After graduating from the
University of Haifa, he served three years with the
Israel Defense Forces, both in the Gaza Strip and on the Lebanese-Israeli border. For about a year, he studied in the
United States. Between 2003 and 2008, he lived in
Moscow and was engaged in commercial real estate and the Forex market.[4] After the financial crisis of 2008, he returned to Israel. Until 2016, he lived on the Rosh HaNikra kibbutz in Israel, near the border with Lebanon, working as a remote editor of Russian travel Internet resources.[5]
Arrest
On December 15, 2016, Lapshin was arrested in Minsk at the request of Azerbaijan for allegedly illegal crossing of the Azerbaijan border and incitements against the state.[6] Lapshin visited
Nagorno Karabakh Republic (which is internationally recognised as a part of Azerbaijan) twice, in 2011 and 2012, resulting in the "blacklisting" by Azerbaijan.
Belarus extradited Lapshin to Azerbaijan on 7 February 7, 2017.[7] Diplomats of Russia, Israel and Armenia attempted to prevent his extradition to Azerbaijan. The representative of the US State Department
John Kirby spoke about the Lapshin case.[8]
The protest in connection with the extradition of Lapshin was also announced by the Council of Europe, the OSCE, Amnesty International, HRW and CPJ.[9][10][11]
Numerous Israeli, Russian,[12][13] Turkish,[14] Czech[15] and EU[16] politicians condemned Lapshin’s extradition and demanded his release.
A court in Baku sentenced Lapshin to three years in prison.[17][18] Three months after that, on 11 September 2017, Ilham Aliyev signed a decree to pardon Alexander Lapshin, after which he was able to fly from Baku to
Tel Aviv.[19][20][21][22]
Attempted murder
On the night of 11 September 2017, Lapshin was attacked in a solitary confinement cell of a Baku
Pre-trial detention. In the morning of the same day,
Ali Hasanov, a personal adviser to the president, made a statement that Lapshin had attempted suicide, but that the prison guards managed to save his life. It was also stated that, in connection with this incident, it was decided to pardon him by presidential decree. Lapshin spent 3 days in the intensive care unit of a Baku hospital and then was deported to Israel. After arriving in Israel, Lapshin made a statement to the press that he had not committed suicide and that he had been attacked in Baku with the aim of murder.[23] Medical examinations conducted in Israel confirmed the blogger’s version of the attempted murder, which contradicted the official position of the Baku authorities. Independent experts in Russia and the Netherlands also confirmed the assassination version, which became the basis for filing a complaint against Azerbaijan to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.[24][25]
Lapshin's appeal to the ECHR
At the beginning of 2018, Alexander Lapshin filed a lawsuit against Azerbaijan in the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR), in which he accused Azerbaijan of attempted murder, torture, illegal imprisonment.[26][27] On May 20, 2021, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled on the blogger's complaint against the Republic of Azerbaijan, finding the country's authorities responsible for the illegal arrest, torture and attempted murder against Lapshin.[28][29]
UN Human Rights Committee on the case of Lapshin
On 19 July 2022 the UN Human Rights Committee adopted a view recognizing the Belarusian authorities as guilty of the illegal arrest and subsequent extradition to Azerbaijan of Alexander Lapshin. The resolution emphasizes that visiting Nagorno-Karabakh as a journalist cannot be considered a criminal offense, and also states that the extradition to Azerbaijan potentially threatened the journalist's life and should not have taken.[30]
^"Info". Moscow-jerusalem.ru. Archived from
the original on 2020-01-13. Retrieved 2020-01-17.
^[UN Human Rights Committee
https://ccprcentre.org/files/decisions/CCPR_C_135_D_2945_2017_34317_E.pdf]. Article 318. Illegal crossing of border of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
318 (1) – crossing of protected border of the Azerbaijan Republic without established documents or
outside of border check-point – is punished by the penalty at a rate from two hundred up to five
hundred of nominal financial unit or imprisonment for the term up to two years.
318 (2) – the act provided by article 318 (1) of the present Code committed on preliminary
arrangement by a group of persons or organized group either with application of violence or with
threat of its application – is punished by imprisonment for the term up to five years.
2 Article 281. Public appeals directed against the state.
281 (1) – public appeals to violent capture of authority, violent deduction of authority or violent
change of constitutional grounds or infringement of territorial integrity of the Azerbaijan Republic, as
well as distribution of materials of such contents – is punished by imprisonment for the term up to
five years.
281 (2) – the same acts committed repeatedly or by a group of persons – is punished by imprisonment
for the term from five up to eight years.