Azerbaijani ambassador summoned to Bern
Published: Monday, Feb 5th 2024, 20:10
Updated At: Monday, Feb 5th 2024, 20:10
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The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs summoned the Azerbaijani ambassador to Bern on Monday. This comes after the Swiss OSCE election observer, EPP National Councillor Nik Gugger (Canton of Zurich), had to leave the country in the Caucasus at the behest of the Azerbaijani authorities.
On this occasion, the FDFA expressed Switzerland's displeasure at the unacceptable treatment of Gugger, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) said at the request of Keystone-SDA. The FDFA is demanding an official explanation from Azerbaijan regarding the incident. The FDFA thus confirmed a report by the news portal blick.ch.
Gugger had travelled to Azerbaijan at the weekend as an official and accredited election observer for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and was supposed to report on the presidential elections next Wednesday.
Gugger assumed on Sunday that the whole thing had to do with his work as a member of the Council of Europe, as he told Keystone-SDA. This was confirmed on Monday in a conversation with the Azerbaijani ambassador, Gugger told SRF's Tagesschau. If possible, Gugger wants to travel to Baku again for the evaluation of the election results on Thursday.
As soon as he landed in the capital Baku, Gugger was stopped by the police at the diplomatic entrance. They confiscated his passport and refused him entry. Other OSCE observers were allowed through without any problems, including the Swiss delegation. The police detained the National Councillor for almost three hours at Baku airport and then put him on a plane to Istanbul. He was only given his passport back in Turkey. He landed in Zurich at 2 p.m. on Saturday.
©Keystone/SDA
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