“I have not received a single penny from that compensation,” blogger Alexander Lapshin, a Russian-Israeli citizen sentenced to 7 months in Azerbaijan, said at an international conference on “After the war: Human Rights and Accountability” at the American University of Armenia, referring to the decision of the European Court of Human Rights against Azerbaijan. The ECHR mandated that Azerbaijan pay 30,000 euros to Alexander Lapshin as compensation.
Alexander Lapshin said that the Minister of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan has openly stated that they will not pay compensation to this man, as it contradicts the national interests of Azerbaijan. On this occasion, Alexander Lapshin said, “This is rather a possible precedent. It is not about money, but human rights. In fact, my case did not receive enough attention in international organizations, they just passed it to the ECHR. It is a great achievement for me, but at the international level it was simply ignored in some way. Taking into account the fact that there is the issue of RA prisoners of war, my case can be useful in that respect.”
The participants of the conference asked Lashpin to tell what conditions he was in the Azerbaijani prison. He said that he was in a prison near Sumgait, east of Baku, where 500 prisoners were being held. The majority were Azeris, and about 10 Iranians․ “The director of the prison said that 4-6 Armenians were kept in the same prison in 2017. They kept me separate. If they kept me in a common cell, they would just kill me. I spent several months without a window, without a TV, for the first two months without books and newspapers. Sometimes representatives of the Red Cross visited me.
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The Deputy Prosecutor General of Azerbaijan told me that we are conducting your case now, I am being convicted for crossing the territory of Azerbaijan illegally. If I accept Nagorno-Karabakh as the territory of Azerbaijan, I will be released immediately. I was threatened with being transferred to a cell for homosexuals or subjected to sexual violence. When you are threatened in such a way, you are ready to recognize even Alaska, Artsakh, everything is part of Azerbaijan.”
In response to the observation that after all that, he still filed a lawsuit against Ilham Aliyev, and isn’t he afraid, Alexander Lapshin answered, “No, first of all, it is a typical Jewish psychology. Second, I spent three years in the Israeli army, somehow preparing for that prison. Now I see that I must continue on my way. I think the decision of the Strasbourg court is not enough, we will apply to the American court. This will be my personal lawsuit against President Aliyev, Hikmet Hajiyev, and others standing next to him. This will be the first precedent in history. Hikmet Hajiyev told me that Azerbaijan is a democratic state, that my rights are protected. That will be their gift from me.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
