Azerbaijani men arrested by Russian police were beaten to death, Baku says
The deaths of the men, brothers named Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov, have raised diplomatic tensions between Moscow and Baku and led to the tit-for-tat arrests of Russian state media journalists working in Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan's ambassador to Russia was summoned to the foreign ministry in Moscow on Tuesday to receive an official protest against Baku's "unfriendly actions" and the "illegal detention" of the journalists.
The rift between Russia and Azerbaijan has widened after investigators in Yekaterinburg, a Russian industrial city, conducted scores of raids last week targeting ethnic Azerbaijanis whom they suspected of complicity in historic unsolved crimes, including serial killings.
The Safarov brothers died during the raids, in which six people were arrested. Russian investigators initially said Ziyaddin had died of heart failure and did not give a cause for death for Huseyn.
The bodies of the men arrived in Baku on Monday evening for forensic examination.
Adalat Hasanov, head of forensic examination at Azerbaijan's health ministry, said fresh post-mortems showed the brothers both died of "post-traumatic shock" due to severe beatings.
Russian examiners' assertion that Ziyaddin, who was born in 1970, died of heart failure, is a "blatant falsehood," Hasanov told reporters.
"During the follow-up examination, we discovered multiple fractures on Ziyaddin's body resulting from beatings. All of his ribs were broken, and a haemorrhage was found on his head, also caused by blunt force trauma," he said.
The other brother, Huseyn, born in 1966, also died as a result of beatings, Hasanov said. He said all of the deceased internal organs had been removed during the previous autopsy in Russia, "which may indicate an attempt to conceal the true cause of death."
Azerbaijan and Russia have traded barbs since the men's deaths, with Baku accusing Russian police of carrying out extrajudicial killings "on ethnic grounds", an allegation Moscow has rejected. Russian investigators said all the six men arrested held Russian passports.
On Monday, police in Baku arrested two journalists working for Sputnik Azerbaijan, the local affiliate of Russian state outlet Rossiya Segodnya, and said it would investigate the agency for illegal funding.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
Six Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow downed, mayor says
July 6 (Reuters) - Russian air defence units downed six Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow on Sunday, mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. Sobyanin, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said specialists were examining fragments of the drones near the Russian capital. He made no mention of damage or casualties. The governor of Leningrad region outside Russia's second largest city, St Petersburg, said two drones had been downed, with no damage or casualties noted. Rosaviatsiya, Russia's civil aviation authority, reported temporary airport closures in the two cities and other regional centres and said dozens of flights had been delayed. Russia's Defence Ministry had earlier reported that 39 Ukrainian drones were intercepted and destroyed over a 5-1/2 hour period into the afternoon, mostly in central Russia or near the Ukrainian border. The ministry said its air defence units had downed 120 Ukrainian drones overnight, mostly in regions bordering Ukraine.
Reuters
3 hours ago
- Reuters
Putin says that globalisation is obsolete and the future belongs to emerging markets
MOSCOW, July 6 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin told BRICS leaders on Sunday that the era of liberal globalisation was obsolete and that the future belonged to swiftly growing emerging markets which should enhance the use of their national currencies for trade. Putin spoke via video link to the summit in Rio de Janeiro due to an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court which alleges he is responsible for war crimes in Ukraine. Moscow says the warrant is unfounded and pointless. BRICS - an idea thought up inside Goldman Sachs two decades ago to describe the growing economic clout of China and other major emerging markets - is now a group that accounts for 45% of the world's population. "Everything indicates that the model of liberal globalisation is becoming obsolete," Putin said in televised remarks. "The centre of business activity is shifting towards the emerging markets." Putin also called on the BRICS countries to step up cooperation in a range of spheres including natural resources, logistics, trade and finance. The five core BRICS members - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - account for more than $28 trillion in nominal Gross Domestic Product in dollar terms while the Group of Seven accounts for more than $51 trillion, according the International Monetary Fund. Much of the economic clout of BRICS, which also includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, though, comes from China, which accounts for more than 60% of the combined clout the BRICS members.
BreakingNews.ie
3 hours ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Russian air travel faces major disruption after Ukraine drone attacks
Russia and Ukraine struck each other with hundreds of drones on Sunday, throwing Russian air travel into disarray days after Moscow launched its largest aerial assault in the three-year-old war. Photos circulating on social media showed crowds huddling at Russian airports including key international hubs in Moscow and St Petersburg, as hundreds of flights were delayed or cancelled due to Ukrainian drone strikes on Saturday and overnight, according to Russia's Transport Ministry. Advertisement The flight disruption hit Moscow's Sheremetyevo and St Petersburg's main Pulkovo airports. Other airports in western and central Russia also faced disruption. Russian air defences shot down 120 Ukrainian drones during the night-time attacks, and 39 more before 2pm local time on Sunday, Russia's Defence Ministry said. It did not say how many had hit targets, or how many had been launched in total. Rescue workers clear the rubble around a house damaged by a Russian strike in Kyiv (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP) Early on Sunday, Ukrainian drones injured two civilians in Russia's Belgorod region near the border, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. The Ukrainian attacks came just days after Russia pummelled Kyiv with waves of drones and missiles overnight into Friday, in what Ukrainian officials called the largest such strike since Moscow's all-out invasion. Advertisement The seven-hour onslaught killed at least two civilians, wounded dozens more and caused widespread damage, Ukraine said, while Moscow ramped up its push to capture more of its neighbour's land. In total, Russia launched 550 drones and missiles across Ukraine that night, according to the country's air force. The barrages have coincided with a concerted Russian effort to break through parts of the roughly 620-mile front line, where Ukrainian troops are under severe pressure. Large-scale Russian drone strikes on Sunday injured three civilians in Kyiv and at least two in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city in the north east, officials said. A large Russian attack involving Shahed drones also targeted port infrastructure in Mykolaiv in central Ukraine, according to governor Vitaliy Kim. He reported warehouses and the port's power grid were damaged but there were no casualties. Advertisement Hours later, Russia launched a glide bomb and a drone at the front-line town of Kostyantynivka in eastern Ukraine, killing four civilians and injuring a fifth, the prosecutor's office said. The drone struck a car in which a married couple were travelling, killing the 39-year-old woman and 40-year-old man on the spot, it said.
