Iranian drivers charged in Baku

The message about the release of two Iranian drivers, who were detained in September on the Goris-Kapan highway, was refuted by Iranian and Azerbaijani authorities. For the first time, Baku announced the names of the detainees and the crimes they are accused of.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on September 11, an Azerbaijani police post, set up on September 9 on the border section of the highway connecting the Armenian cities of Goris and Kapan, began working. On September 15, it became known about the detention of two Iranian truckers who were transporting cement.

On October 13, the "Fars" Agency reported, citing its own source, that Azerbaijani authorities had released the Iranian drivers.

In the evening on October 13, the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee (SCC) issued a refutation of this information. "Some media and social networks have disseminated false information about the return home of the drivers-citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), detained by the customs authorities of Azerbaijan," the SCC's statement says, as translated by the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

The refutation notes that Barzegar Hakhi Jafar Gazanfar and Noruzi Shakhroad Geidar, the IRI citizens of Iran, who had fraudulently, by using documents and means of customs identification, crossed the customs border of Azerbaijan, drove to the Armenian city of Khankendi (the Azerbaijani name of Stepanakert).

According to the customs inspection, they crossed the Azerbaijani border "without duly established documents and outside the border checkpoints."

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on October 14, 2021 at 08:57 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.