Azerbaijan's special services ‘sought to kidnap Lapshin' in Baltic states

Alexander Lapshin, the Russian-Israeli blogger who was jailed - and later relased on pardon - in Azerbaijan, has shared details of a recent incident in the Baltic states, where he claims the Azerbaijani special services attempted to organize his kidnapping.

In a post on Facebook, the blogger says he was at the London airport on December 12 when acquantainces contacted him ahead of a scheduled flight to Vilnius, Lithuania (from where he was later set to travel to the Latvian capital).

“I was told that the State Security Service of Azerbaijan had sent a notice to the Baltic states and several other countries to order my arrest. The procedure was arranged internally, i.e.- among the special services, instead of contacting Interpol, I was asked to observe caution and, desirably, cancel my planned trips to Latvia and Lithuania, where Azerbaijan operates strong corruption channels,” the blogger said.  

Noting that the connections among the said states do not oblige the hosting country to arrest an individual, Lapshin highlights the implicitly reqiured procedure of communicating at least entry and exit details.

Notwithstanding the warnings, the blogger travelled to both Vilnius and Riga but had to cancel his participation in a tourism conference on December 15 (knowing in advance that the Azerbaijani Embassy was going to send employees for conducting a "monitoring").

“They had sent two people who didn’t enter [the conference hall] but stood on the left close to the door. I have no idea who they are  - whether embassy workers or activists of the local Azerbaijani community,” Lapshin elaborated.

The blogger said he was under the impression that Azerbaijan had intentionally relied on the tactics of interstate connections, knowing well in advance that that his arrest through Interpol would be practically ruled out.

Lapshin, who was arrested in Minsk, Belarus on December 15, 2016, was handed over to the Azerbaijani authorities on February 7, 2017 over critical remarks against that country’s governemnt and a visit to the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) Republic.