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Azerbaijani Student Repatriated After Two Years of Detention in Iran

By Nigar Bayramli January 21, 2025

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Azerbaijani citizen Farid Safarli, who had been detained in the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2023 on an alleged espionage charge, was transferred to Azerbaijan on January 18, 2025. / Caliber.Az

Farid Safarli, an Azerbaijani citizen detained in Iran in 2023, has been repatriated to Azerbaijan.

According to a joint statement issued by Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Security Service on January 20, Safarli's return was facilitated through international legal cooperation and under the directive of the President of Azerbaijan.

“Azerbaijan would continue to take necessary measures to protect the rights and interests of its citizens abroad, ensuring their safety and well-being in such situations,” the statement read.

Upon his arrival, Safarli underwent a medical examination and was reunited with his family on January 18.

The 26-year-old, a master's student at Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany, had traveled to Iran in late February 2023 to meet a female acquaintance, a citizen of Iran, whom he had met during his studies in Germany. However, his family lost contact with him on March 3, 2023, and later discovered that he had been detained by Iranian authorities.

Initially accused of espionage, the charges against Safarli were later reduced to "intent to carry out espionage." During a court hearing in July 2023, the charge of "espionage" was replaced with "intent to spy," leading to a sentence of two and a half years in detention.

Azerbaijani experts believe his detention was a reaction to Baku's exposure of an Iranian spy network in Azerbaijan amid heightened tensions between the two nations. These tensions were aggravated by the armed attack on the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tehran in January 2023. Following the attack, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry advised its citizens to avoid traveling to Iran.

In January 2024, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov stated that the government was taking all necessary measures regarding the detention of Safarli.

Despite the strained relations, Baku and Tehran have recently shown signs of rapprochement, with ongoing negotiations aimed at easing "tensions and misunderstandings."

In early January 2025, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev revisited the January 2023 embassy attack, stating, “Two years have passed since that incident. To this day, the individual responsible has not faced the sentence that was handed down to him. All of this points to the fact that it was an organized act.” He also noted that Azerbaijan reopened its embassy in Tehran in July 2024 after assurances from the late Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian that the perpetrator's sentence would be executed.