Azerbaijan pardons French prisoner after EU caves in on sanctions
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Editor's note: this is a developing story
Azerbaijan's leader Ilham Aliyev pardoned a French national on Sept. 23 reports France 24, hours after the EU agreed to delist two Russian oligarchs from sanctions.
The EU was forced by French pressure to drop sanctions against oligarchs Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman on Sept. 22, in return for allowing the bloc's remaining 3,000 Russia sanctions to remain in force.
The French government has not publicly cited why it adopted this position, and only citing a "national security" situation around the table with EU ambassadors.
The Financial Times first reported it was linked to Azerbaijan's holding prisoner two people of French nationality.
Those two names were suspected of being Martin Ryan and Anass Derraz, since three weeks before, the French lawmaker Marc Dena enquired what France was doing to secure their release in a French parliamentary question.
Aliyev's pardoning of Martin Ryan goes some way to confirming that suspicion.
