The victim had been exiled to France since 2016 because of his positions against the authoritarian Azeri regime.
Four men, three born in Azerbaijan and one in Georgia, have been indicted for attempted murder in an organized gang and imprisoned in the investigation into the attack on an Azeri blogger in March 2021 in Nantes, it has been reported. learned Tuesday from the Rennes prosecutor's office.
“Four men, aged 26 to 35, three born in Azerbaijan and one in Georgia, with no significant criminal record were arrested and placed in police custody,” said Rennes public prosecutor Philippe Astruc. , confirming information from local media.
At the end of this police custody, “they were presented to the investigating judge of the specialized interregional jurisdiction (Jirs) of Rennes in charge of the investigation.
They were indicted on counts of attempted murder in an organized gang and criminal association with a view to the preparation of a crime and were all placed in pre-trial detention”.
In March 2021, in the center of Nantes, Mahammad Mirzali had indicated that he had been attacked “by individuals who were in a vehicle” which they had left hastily to give him “several punches but also several blows” knife or cutter before fleeing, a police source told AFP.
He had already been the victim of an attempted homicide a year earlier.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) denounced in a tweet "a brutal attempt to silence a critic of the regime", calling on the French authorities to "shed light on this attack".
The young man's YouTube page, titled Made in Azerbaijan, is followed by 466,000 people.
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Pays de la Loire
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