Azerbaijan: Frenchman sentenced to 10 years for spying

"I consider myself guilty only in that I should not have established contacts with some embassy employees, or that I should have shared information about them with the appropriate authorities. I did not spy. I am not a spy, and during the court case I tried to prove this."

"An Azerbaijani court sentenced Martin Ryan of France to 10 years in prison on Monday, after finding him guilty of collecting secret information about Baku's military cooperation with Turkey and Pakistan. He was also accused of cooperating with employees of France's security services allegedly operating out of the French embassy in Baku."

"The Frenchman was arrested during a period of heightened Paris-Baku tensions that have since eased. Both the tensions and the investigation in Ryan relate to the 44-day war in 2020 between Azerbaijan, Armenia, and ethnic Armenian separatists known as the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War."

Martin Ryan, a French national, was convicted by an Azerbaijani court and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for collecting classified information about Baku's military cooperation with Turkey and Pakistan, and for alleged contacts with French security service employees at the French embassy. His Azerbaijani co-defendant, Azad Mamedli, received a 12-year sentence for treason after authorities claimed Ryan recruited him and arranged meetings with French intelligence agents. Ryan acknowledged inappropriate contacts with embassy officials but denied engaging in espionage. The case occurred during heightened tensions between Azerbaijan and France stemming from the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, when France adopted a pro-Armenian stance critical of Azerbaijan's military conduct.

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