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A court in Baku has ordered that eight Russian citizens be held in pre-trial detention for four months following their arrest on July 1, according to a report by the Azerbaijani news agency APA. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan has accused the group of being members of organized criminal networks involved in cybercrime and drug smuggling.
Photographs from the courtroom show the detainees bearing visible signs of physical abuse: one has dried blood on his face, while others appear with bruises and contusions.
According to the independent investigative outlet Important Stories (IStories), the detainees include 41-year-old IT entrepreneur and startup founder Anton Drachev, 30-year-old programmer Dmitry Bezugly from St. Petersburg, and 23-year-old programmer Sergey Sofronov from Cherepovets. Some of those arrested appear to have left Russia after Vladimir Putin announced a “partial” military mobilization in September 2022.
In a separate case, two more Russian nationals — Igor Kartavykh and Yevgeny Belousov, employees of the Moscow-run news agency Sputnik Azerbaijan — were also placed in custody for four months. They face charges of money laundering, fraud, and illegal business activity. Local media outlets said both men were accused of being agents of the FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service.
The wave of arrests comes in the wake of police raids in Russia’s Yekaterinburg, during which two Azerbaijani nationals were killed and several members of the Azerbaijani diaspora were detained in connection with a murder case dating back to 2001. Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry protested the raid, and the subsequent arrests in Baku are widely seen as being retaliatory.
Azerbaijani authorities have launched a criminal investigation into the alleged torture and murder of the two Azeris — Huseyn and Ziyaddin Safarov — who died in police custody. Autopsies carried out in Baku after the bodies of the deceased were repatriated reportedly showed clear signs of physical abuse.