On 17 August, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev issued an order to recall Eldar Hasanov from the post of Azerbaijani ambassador to Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. Three days earlier, by the decision of the Sabail District Court against Hasanov, a preventive measure was chosen in the form of arrest for a period of three months. Hasanov was charged under Articles 308.2 (abuse of office, which entailed grave consequences) and 308-1.1 (misuse of state budget funds), marking the first arrest of an Azerbaijani diplomat since independence. Under these articles, the former Azerbaijani ambassador to the Balkan countries faces up to 7 years in prison.
The Russian news site Regnum highlighted Aliyev’s speech after appointing Jeyhun Bayramov as the country's new foreign minister. “Some of our diplomats abroad have turned into ambassadors of the countries in which they work. This must end. This is a manifestation of erroneous personnel policy. Some diplomats committed treason to the state, betrayed it and did not hide it. They are under the control of the special services of the countries in which they live. We have enough information about this,” Aliyev said. This seems to suggest that a drastic change of Azerbaijan’s diplomatic apparatus is underway, with Hasanov’s case just being the first of the many.
Prior to Hasanov’s arrest in Serbia, the Serbian Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic visited Azerbaijan, following the arms trade scandal during the Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes in the Tovuz region (Caucasus Watch reported). Stefanovic met with his Azerbaijani counterpart Vilayat Eyvazov, as well as with the Secretary of the Security Council under the President of Azerbaijan Ramil Usubov, Presidential Aide and Head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Administration Hikmet Hajiyev and Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov. The Serbian and Azerbaijani delegations discussed security cooperation and reached an agreement in expanding cooperation in the exchange of sensitive information, counter-terrorism and other significant fields.
To note, Eldar Hasanov was one of the influential figures of Azerbaijan’s former President’s Heydar Aliyev's team. When Heydar Aliyev came to power, he was first appointed First Deputy Prosecutor General in 1993 and then Prosecutor General in 1995. Afterwards he embarked on a diplomatic career, serving as Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Romania and then to Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro.
