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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on Wednesday pardoning several convicted individuals, including French citizen Martin Ryan, whose release was part of a wider agreement with Paris tied to the delisting of Uzbek-Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov from the EU’s sanctions list.
Ryan has been released from prison and will arrive in Paris today, Euronews understands.
On Tuesday, Brussels renewed its sanctions list of more than 2,600 individuals and entities considered close to the Kremlin or supportive of Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. France, however, secured the removal of Usmanov as part of the prisoner release deal.
Ryan was freed the following day under the presidential pardon, along with 19 other prisoners, four of them foreign nationals, though none an EU citizen.
According to a statement from Azerbaijan’s presidential office, the pardon was “based on the principles of humanism” and “taking into account the personality, health, family status of the convicted persons, the nature of the crimes they committed and the degree of public danger, the period of their sentence and their behaviour during that period.”
A French businessman, Ryan was arrested in December 2023 and later sentenced to 10 years in prison on espionage charges, accused of gathering information on the Azerbaijani armed forces for France’s foreign intelligence service, the DGSE.
France publicly challenged the Azerbaijani proceedings, considering them arbitrary and based on an unfair trial.
Last week, Euronews reported that Paris was pushing to remove Usmanov from the sanctions list to secure the release of two French nationals detained in Azerbaijan, as part of a prisoner swap.
Euronews also reported on Monday that Azerbaijan would issue a presidential pardon.
Earlier this year, Azerbaijan was named alongside Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in a letter sent by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, requesting Usmanov’s delisting.
The other prisoner believed to be part of the agreement is French water-management executive Anass Derraz, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for allegedly accepting a bribe in 2018 from an Azerbaijani-Russian businessman in connection with efforts to free an impounded yacht. Derraz currently remains in detention.
Usmanov denies any ties to Vladimir Putin’s regime.
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