The story of Alexander Lapshin, the Israeli blogger who won a trial at the European Court of Human Rights against the authoritarian regime in Baku. Caught between the cynical interests of states
By Sidonia Bogdan
Eli Driu (photo) photographer
Libertatea
Alexander Lapshin, the Russian-Israeli blogger who was illegally arrested in 2017 by the Azerbaijani authorities and tortured during his detention in Baku, recently visited Romania and told how difficult it is for a simple citizen to defend himself against dictatorial regimes, such as that of President Ilham Aliyev. He points out that, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, ties between the Moscow and Baku regimes intensified over oil and gas exports, with Azerbaijan thus becoming a pawn in the service of Russian interests to avoid the economic consequences of western sanctions.
Alexander Lapshin was illegally arrested in Belarus and extradited to Azerbaijan in 2017 because he had visited the Nagorno-Karabakh region in 2011, and since then he has been speaking out against the brutal oppression of Armenians by Azerbaijan.
In an interview for Libertatea, Lapshin explained that, during his illegal detention, he felt abandoned including by representatives of the Israeli government who, at the time, were more interested in not damaging strategic diplomatic relations with Azerbaijan, a regional ally of Israel, than to defend his rights. Lapshin, born in Russia, educated in Israel and the USA.
The life story of the Israeli Lapshin is an extremely passionate one. “I was born in the city of Sverdlovsk, now Yekaterinburg, a city in the middle of Russia, near the Ural Mountains, in a half-Russian, half-Ukrainian-Jewish family. Originally, my family lived in the city of Lviv in Ukraine, but during the Holocaust, the Germans executed most of the family and the rest managed to flee to the Soviet Union,” he explains. The tragic history his family went through makes him feel close to the Ukrainian cause. Lapshin finds similarities between the genocidal actions of the Nazi regime against the Jews during World War II and the current policy of the Putin regime against the Ukrainian people. “Putin invented various stupid explanations for this war, like that Ukraine was about to join NATO or that the rights of Russian speakers were not being respected. I have been to Ukraine many times, I had relatives there. There was no problem with any language in Ukraine, you could speak any language you wanted,” he recounts. At the age of 13, Alexander Lapshin’s family decided to leave Russia and settle in Israel. As a result, he did his higher education in Haifa, and later in the United States. As a young employee in a bank, the Israeli realized that this type of bureaucratic profession did not suit him and decided to become a travel blogger, a more exciting activity, but in his case, it turned out to be a dangerous one.
Unavoidably drawn to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he got to know closely during the period in which he was drafted into the army, Lapshin chose, for his travels, rather difficult areas of conflict. Moreover, the entire Middle East has a long history of inter-ethnic violence, and the field experience he gained as a blogger helped him easily find similarities or differences between the various inter-ethnic conflicts in the region close to Israel. “The Arab-Israeli conflict was artificially created because the Jews lived peacefully with the Arabs in the Middle East for a thousand years. In fact, the conflict was created after the creation of the state of Israel. I know both sides’ version because I have made many friends in the Middle East in my travels, Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, etc. I learned that most of Israel believes that the West Bank is ancient Jewish territory from the Bible, and on the other hand, that the Palestinians have lived there for two thousand years. And I learned that most of the anti-Israel propaganda in the Arab states is real and exceptional, and boils down to the idea that Israel should not exist and should be destroyed. Most of the Arab media published a lot of racist things about Israel,” Lapshin claims.
The Israeli draws a clear distinction between the moderate politics supported by Fatah in the West Bank and the politics of Hamas in Gaza, a terrorist organization that does not recognize the existence of the state of Israel and has, over time, been primarily responsible for terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens. Asked how many states in the Muslim world still do not recognize the sovereignty of the state of Israel, the Israeli blogger replied that 25, and if he wants to travel to these states that do not have diplomatic ties with Israel, he uses his Russian passport. In addition to the Russian one, Lapshin also holds a Ukrainian passport. Why Lapshin wanted to visit the Nagorno Karabakh region?
Asked if the roots of the conflicts in the Middle East lie in the artificial drawing of borders between the new states formed by the great powers in the interwar period, after the Ottoman Empire had fallen apart, Lapshin answered in the affirmative and brought up a similar policy promoted by the dictator Stalin, during the USSR. Thus, through a simple comparison, the discussion jumped from the Middle East to the South Caucasus, namely, the region we are interested in, Nagorno Karabakh.
“During the Soviet period, Stalin changed the borders so that a territory with 99% Christians was given to the majority Muslim Azerbaijan. Thus, an Armenian Christian population had to live in a Muslim Azerbaijan. It was a political decision of the divide and conquer type, a strategy of the communists applied not only in Armenia and Azerbaijan, but in several places in Central Asia,” explains Lapshin.
The roots of today’s problems in Nagorno-Karabakh, like others in the ex-Soviet space, date back to the time of the dictator Stalin, who made this region an autonomous one, but included it in Azerbaijan. In fact, the region’s controversial history led Lapshin to rent a car in 2011 and visit for a few days. “Like all tourists, I rented a car, traveled and then published some articles on my blog and in some publications in Israel, Russia and Ukraine. It really wasn’t anything special. I was a travel journalist, I kept away from any politics. At that time, I thought that politics was not my business. Today, however, I no longer believe this. As the Russians and Ukrainians say, if you are not interested in politics, then politics will be interested in you,” Lapshin confesses.
What he would find out a few years later is that, after this visit, the Azeri authorities were pursuing him internationally to criminally investigate him for illegally crossing the border into this region. According to the BBC, Azerbaijani authorities also claimed that Lapshin had called for the region’s independence in his blog posts – a claim that is difficult to verify as many of the relevant posts were deleted after his arrest. According to Azerbaijani law, it is illegal for anyone to call for a change in the “territorial integrity” of the country.
Five years later, when Lapshin was traveling by train from Lithuania to Belarus, the nightmare began. “I was going to take the train from Lithuania through the Republic of Belarus to Moscow. Today it is simply impossible. There are no more trains between Lithuania and Moscow. But then one could travel. And I stopped in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. I decided to walk around for a day, to see Minsk too. In the middle of the night at the hotel, someone knocked on my door. I saw policemen with guns just like in the movies. I was sleeping. They said they were from the police. ‘Are you Mr. Lapshin?’ they asked me. I said ‘yes.’ ‘You are under arrest because of your illegal visit to Nagorno-Karabakh.’ I said ‘guys – is this a joke or something? the blogger recounts. In fact, there was an agreement between Belarus and Azerbaijan to allow Belarusian police to arrest him and extradite him to Azerbaijan, an agreement specific to states with dictatorial regimes in the ex-Soviet space that do not respect the democratic principles of the rule of law, as a does Interpol. The case became problematic because Lapshin was accused of crimes that do not exist in democratic regimes, and they concern the right to free expression. In fact, he had posted some critical messages to the Azerbaijani authorities on social media, as claimed by Haaretz. To ease the diplomatic pressure caused by his arrest, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko declared on February 3, 2017 that Lapshin had been detained “pursuant to an Interpol decision”. However, the lie was contradicted even by the Office of the General Prosecutor of Belarus, which confirmed that Lapshin was never on an Interpol list.
With his illegal arrest, the diplomatic scandal erupted. Since he was also a Russian citizen, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov publicly intervened and asked the Belarusian authorities not to extradite Lapshin. “Russia opposes the criminalization of visits by journalists or other persons to this territory or to other territories in different regions. Moscow does not agree to the extradition to a third country of Russians detained abroad. I contacted Mr. Lapshin through the consul. We know that he is also an Israeli citizen and that Israeli diplomats have also contacted him. We will take all measures to resolve the situation with full respect for the rights of the Russian citizen. We are working closely with the Israelis in this regard,” Lavrov said at the time. Israel, Armenia, the Council of Europe and the US State Department tried to prevent his extradition, but to no avail. On February 7, 2017, the Supreme Court of Belarus rejected Lapshin’s appeal against the extradition verdict issued by the Prosecutor General of Belarus, and in the winter of 2017, he ended up in a detention cell in Baku, Azerbaijan. Azeri President Ilham Aliyev personally thanked Lukashenko for his extradition.
Once in the custody of the Azeri authorities, the situation became even more complicated. Israel’s ambassador in Baku told Lapshin that the scandal surrounding his arrest had come at a bad diplomatic moment, as Israel and Azerbaijan had signed a security agreement. “The ambassador told me that Azerbaijan is one of the few countries in the Middle East, Muslim countries, that is able to cooperate with Israel. He told me – you know very well the situation in our region, that we have no allies here. He told me that I was a scandal, that they would try to free me from there, but to stop making noise, to have a discreet profile, as if I were to blame. In fact, Israel was selling drones and missile systems to Azerbaijan to fight against Armenia. And Armenia supported me both politically and at the level of ordinary people. So I spent two months in Belarus and seven months in Azerbaijan in isolation. I was alone for seven months in a small cell, three square meters,” Lapshin recounts.
In fact, the military cooperation between Israel and Azerbaijan was and is very strong. In 2012, Israel and Azerbaijan signed an agreement under which the state company Israel Aerospace Industries committed to sell $1.6 billion worth of drones and anti-aircraft and missile defense systems to Azerbaijan. Moreover, even in December 2016, when Lapshin was in illegal detention in Minsk, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was making a historic visit to Baku with the aim of providing a positive example of Muslim-Jewish coexistence. At the press conference held by the two political leaders, Aliyev stated that over the years, Baku has purchased Israeli weapons worth almost $5 billion. What unites the cooperation between the two states is the fear of Iran.
On the one hand, there is a proxy war between Israel and Iran, with Iran being the regional power that supports Hamas and Hezbollah, two non-state actors hostile to Israel. On the other hand, the relationship between Iran and Azerbaijan is plagued with suspicion and mistrust because, after the breakup of the USSR and the recognition of Azerbaijan as an independent state, Baku frequently expressed irredentist theses and promoted the idea of a reunified historical Azerbaijan that would unite today’s Azerbaijan (current country) with the region inside Iran, also called Azerbaijan, where the population is mostly composed of Azeris. Fearing Baku’s intentions to fuel secessionism, Iran has provided strong support to Armenia in its war against Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. In response, Azerbaijan has developed strategic relations with Turkey, a state that has historically bad relations with Armenia due to the Armenian Genocide in the early 20th century. In this complicated geostrategic game, the blogger Lapshin has become the character who plays the democratic card of respect for human rights and is supported by various activist and human rights groups in Armenia and the Armenian diaspora.
The period of detention was not easy for him. Azerbaijani prosecutors and investigators frequently questioned him and suggested that he plead guilty in court. They were suggesting that I plead guilty to being an Armenian spy. That Armenia had paid me to organize provocations against the Azerbaijanis. Or that I worked for the Russian KGB or the Israeli Mossad and other stupid things. And that I illegally crossed the border from Armenia into Nagorno-Karabakh.
Lapshin received an ex officio lawyer, but instead of defending him, the lawyer defended the position of the Azerbaijani authorities. Like the investigators, the lawyer was suggesting that he plead guilty. The hardest moment during his detention came one night when Azeri interrogators beat and tortured him until he lost consciousness and woke up in a hospital bed in Baku. Following international pressure and diplomatic negotiations with Israel, President Aliyev released him from custody and he was able to be transferred to a hospital in Israel. In fact, Lapshin was released on September 14, 2017, while the day before, the Azerbaijani defense minister had arrived in Israel to negotiate arms procurement contracts. Once he arrived in Israel, the ex-detainee wanted to get justice and complained to Azerbaijan at the European Court of Human Rights. In 2021, by unanimous decision, the European Court of Human Rights found the Azerbaijani authorities guilty of torturing him and attempting to kill him in a prison in Baku. The court also ruled that Baku must pay him 30,000 euros in damages, but Lapshin has not received a single euro to date. At the same time, on July 19, 2022, the UN Human Rights Committee adopted a resolution finding the Belarusian authorities 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 crime and also states that the extradition to Azerbaijan put the journalist’s life at risk and should not have taken place. Lapshin recounts that, upon arriving in the country, the Israeli secret services wanted to discourage him in his desire to get justice and suggested that he not sue Azerbaijan at the European Court, so as not to jeopardize diplomatic relations between Israel and Azerbaijan. But he did not listen to this advice, and this brought him repercussions. Lapshin claims that the Israeli secret services threatened him that his wife, originally from the Republic of Moldova and in the process of naturalization, will not receive an Israeli passport, but her uncertain status will force them to leave Israel. Something that happened by the way. “Currently, we live somewhere between Armenia, Europe and the United States,” he says.
As a former illegal detainee, Lapshin empathizes with the families of Israeli hostages who, during this period of the Gaza war, have publicly called for the resignation of Prime Minister Netanyahu and an agreement to release the hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. “Did you hear about the Israeli hostages in Gaza? Those people have been hostages for nine months. Most Israelis went to demonstrations and rallies against Prime Minister Netanyahu and demanded an agreement with Hamas to release the hostages. But Netanyahu did not want to stop the war and cooperate with the terrorists, believing that if you are ready to cooperate with the terrorists, they will continue their terrorist activity again and again. So there are two sides to this story. When you’re a hostage, you’re in a horrible position, of course you want to be freed at all costs, just like I wanted to be. But when you’re a politician, you think a little differently. Because you have to think about whether you are ready to cooperate with Hamas. Hamas will see this hill as a good way to do business, to take people hostage in the future and then demand some benefits,” explains the Israeli blogger. The solution to stop the two wars that mark the entire international scene? The total cut of the funding of the axis of evil, the Israeli claims. “It’s a bigger game that the war in Gaza is part of, because Russia and Iran support Hamas. Putin’s plans are related to the restoration of the USSR, and Azerbaijan has a role, because it helps Russia circumvent European and American sanctions”, concludes Alexander Lapshin. The controversy of the war in Ukraine is that, while the Europeans and Americans are fighting to isolate the power of the dictator Putin, they are supporting the influence of another autocrat, Ilham Aliyev, who turns out to be Putin’s ally, he believes.
Russian oil and gas exports through Azerbaijan have increased significantly after Russia lost access to a large part of the European market following the invasion of Ukraine. Russian oil exports to Azerbaijan quadrupled in 2023. Azerbaijan has also become an indispensable partner for Russia when it comes to transporting goods to and from Iran and Persian Gulf ports. Baku is currently spearheading a fundamental geopolitical transformation of the region. Its rise has been driven by the Baku regime’s skillful exploitation of its two main assets – oil and gas – the value of which has been greatly enhanced by Russia’s war against Ukraine, as Europeans looked for alternatives to supplying EU states with oil and gas.
