Azerbaijan pardoned a French citizen convicted of espionage, one day after the European Union lifted sanctions against Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, in a coincidence that fueled suspicions of possible pressure from Baku on Paris.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev granted the pardon on Wednesday to Martin Ryan, who was serving a 10-year prison sentence in Baku after being found guilty of espionage in March. Ryan had been detained in December 2023 and accused of gathering information on Azerbaijan's military cooperation with Turkey and Pakistan. It was not immediately clear if the pardon meant his immediate release.
The decision came just 24 hours after the European Union removed Usmanov from its sanctions list against individuals linked to Russia. Three European diplomats mentioned that Paris had privately indicated that Azerbaijan was using the case of the Russian businessman to pressure France due to the detention of two French citizens on Azerbaijani territory.
The accusation points to a possible connection between two diplomatic issues that, officially, have not been linked by any of the governments involved. An Azerbaijani diplomat rejected last week the suggestions that Baku was conducting a pressure campaign and labeled those claims as ''categorically unfounded''.
According to Azerbaijan's position, the government had publicly defended the removal of Usmanov from the sanctions regime because it considers the measures taken against the Russian businessman to be unjust. Baku's support for the billionaire had been expressed prior to the EU's decision.
The case of Ryan is also related to another French citizen imprisoned in Azerbaijan. A French magazine identified the second detainee as Anass Derraz, an employee of the French water management company Saur. Derraz was sentenced in 2025 to 12 years in prison on corruption charges and was not among the prisoners pardoned this Wednesday.
