Criminal case opened against Russian security officials in Azerbaijan

The Prosecutor General's Office of Azerbaijan has opened a criminal case on the fact of torture and premeditated murder with particular cruelty of two citizens of the country and persons of Azerbaijani origin by Russian law enforcement officers. We are talking about the murder of two people, the Safarov brothers, and torture of other people during a raid by FSB officers in Yekaterinburg.

Azerbaijan reported that on June 27 in Yekaterinburg, employees of the Russian Guard, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB detained citizens of Azerbaijan and persons of Azerbaijani origin. They were suspected of involvement in previously committed crimes. Some of them were tortured, two died - these are 60-year-old Guseyn Safarov and his brother, 55-year-old Ziyaddin Safarov. Baku also noted that other detainees were tortured. Six people were sent to pretrial detention.

Following this, the delegation of the Azerbaijani parliament, headed by First Vice Speaker Ali Akhmedov, refused to participate in a planned meeting of the Commission on Interparliamentary Cooperation with the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation in Moscow. The Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan, in turn, announced the cancellation of all events related to Russia.

On June 30, Azerbaijani security forces detained the editor-in-chief of the state agency Sputnik Azerbaijan Igor Kartavykh and editor-in-chief Yevgeny Belousov in Baku. Both were called FSB agents working undercover. Following this, the Azerbaijani ambassador was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry in connection with "Baku's unfriendly actions and the illegal detention of Russian journalists."

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