A rapidly escalating diplomatic feud between Russia and Azerbaijan has developed over the death of two Azeri men arrested by Russian police during an organized crime investigation who died in custody under mysterious circumstances. Azerbaijan has accused the Russians of torturing the men to death.
The men who died in Russian custody were brothers named Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov. They were taken into custody along with about 50 other Azeris during a raid in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on June 27.
Russian officials said the raid was conducted as part of an investigation into an ethnic organized crime ring – essentially an Azeri mafia – whose crimes included the stabbing death of an Azeri clothier named Yunis Pashayev in 2001.
Pashayev was allegedly killed for refusing to pay protection money to the gang. According to Russian prosecutors, the gang has made several other attempts to murder businessmen who would not comply with its financial demands over the years.
The people detained on June 27 included four suspects who shared the last name Safarov. Ziyaddin and Huseyn were confirmed to be brothers, aged 55 and 60, respectively. Both of them died under enigmatic circumstances.
Eyewitnesses to the raid and its aftermath said the Russian police were brutal toward their captives, subjecting them to beatings and outright torture. Russian officials conceded two of the detainees died, one of them ostensibly from heart failure. No explanation for the second death was offered.
On July 1, officials in Azerbaijan announced that a post-mortem examination of the Safarov brothers, after their bodies were flown to Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku, revealed signs of physical abuse on both — including massive blood loss, shock from physical trauma, broken bones, and internal injuries.
The chief medical examiner said they appeared to have been killed by severe beating with blunt weapons. Huseyn Safarov suffered from internal bleeding, damage to his liver and lungs, and a deformed chest. Ziyaddin had bruises, abrasions, and contusions “covering almost his entire body,” and one of his ribs was “missing entirely.” Both of them had contusions in the genital area.
The Prosecutor General of Azerbaijan launched a “criminal investigation” into “the torture and brutal killing of Azerbaijani citizens and individuals of Azerbaijani origin in the Russian Federation.”
Azerbaijan reacted to the raid, and the deaths of the Safarov brothers, with unbridled fury. Relations with Russia were already tense due to Russia shooting down an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane with surface-to-air missiles near Grozny in December 2024.
Russian officials refused to allow the damaged plane to land despite the pilot’s pleas for emergency landing rights. Instead, the damaged plane was ordered to fly back across the Caspian Sea to an airport in Kazakhstan. The plane crashed during its emergency landing attempt, killing 38 people and injuring 29 more.
On Tuesday, an Azerbaijani news website published audio recordings and documents provided by an anonymous source that showed the Russian Defense Ministry directly ordered a missile battery commander to shoot down Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 in December. The order was given despite poor weather conditions and known problems with Russia’s communications equipment.
Outrage over the plane shootdown and the death of the Safarov brothers blended into a perfect diplomatic storm in Azerbaijan, which was already unhappy with the Russians and making overtures to the Western world. Some observers believe the two incidents have reached critical mass and created a permanent rift between the former Soviet Union territory and Moscow.
Azerbaijan’s anger has been fueled by the arrogant and dismissive response from Russia to both deadly incidents. Some Russian commentators are accusing the Azeris of faking their outrage because they wanted an excuse to abandon their alliance with Russia.
“Buoyed by military victories in Nagorno-Karabakh, increased energy exports to Europe, and strategic ties with Turkey, Baku appears less willing to accommodate Russia’s ‘heavy-handed diplomacy,’ they say, which could have a significant impact on regional geopolitics,” Radio Free Europe (RFE) observed on Tuesday.
Russian medical examiners on Monday dismissed the Azerbaijan examiner’s conclusions about the death of the Safarov brothers as a “blatant falsehood.” Azerbaijan, in turn, accused the Russians of removing the brothers’ internal organs during an autopsy to conceal the true cause of death.
When Azerbaijan accused Russia of persecuting the organized crime suspects on ethnic grounds, the Russians responded that everyone charged in the case so far held a Russian passport, so they were technically Russian citizens, not Azeris.
Azerbaijan has canceled several scheduled visits by Russian officials and Russian cultural events since the June 27 raid. The Azerbaijan Culture Ministry said the events were canceled due to the “demonstrative targeted and extrajudicial killings and acts of violence committed by Russian law enforcement agencies against Azerbaijanis on ethnic grounds in Yekaterinburg.”
When Azerbaijan canceled a planned visit by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk last week, the Azeri government said it “does not consider it appropriate under the current circumstances for Overchuk or any other official representative of Russia to visit the country.”
On Monday, police in Baku raided the offices of Russia’s state-run Sputnik news agency and arrested two of its employees, including editor-in-chief Yevgeny Belousov.
Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs accused Sputnik of operating in through “illegal funding” after its accreditations were revoked in February. Russia slammed the arrests as “illegal” and “unfriendly” actions by the government in Baku.
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