An Azerbaijani court on Monday sentenced Martin Ryan, a French national, to 10 years in prison after finding him guilty of collecting secret information about Baku’s military cooperation with Turkey and Pakistan.
He was also accused of collaborating with employees of France’s security services who were allegedly operating out of the French embassy in Baku.
Ryan pleaded guilty to some, but not all, of the charges. His co-accused, Azerbaijani national Azad Mamedli, received a 12-year sentence for treason.
Azerbaijani authorities say Ryan recruited Mamedli and arranged meetings between him and French intelligence agents.
Speaking in court, Ryan did not deny contacts with embassy staff but said he did not knowingly engage in espionage. “I consider myself guilty only in that I should not have established contacts with some embassy employees, or that I should have shared information about them with the appropriate authorities,” he told France’s AFP news agency. “I did not spy. I am not a spy, and during the court case I tried to prove this.”
What are relations between Azerbaijan and France like?
Ryan’s arrest came amid heightened Paris–Baku tensions that have since eased. Both the tensions and the investigation are linked to the 44-day 2020 war between Azerbaijan, Armenia and ethnic Armenian separatists in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.
France was highly critical of Azerbaijan’s conduct during that conflict and took a strongly pro-Armenian stance. Paris’ position was also viewed as an effort to counter Turkish and Russian influence in the region. France is home to a large Armenian diaspora.
Both Azerbaijan and Armenia have been accused by organizations such as Amnesty International of committing war crimes against civilians.
Azerbaijan has remained close to Russia during Moscow’s war in Ukraine, while France supports Kyiv. Armenia is a traditional Russian ally, though ties have soured in recent years.
In September 2023 Azerbaijan launched a rapid offensive that brought the entirety of Nagorno-Karabakh — internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but long governed by Armenian separatists since the 1990s — back under Baku’s control, prompting the exodus of almost all of the territory’s ethnic Armenian population.
Edited by: Saim Dušan Inayatullah