Azerbaijan arrests at least 9 citizens allegedly working for Iran, Armenia

Azerbaijan has arrested at least nine citizens allegedly working for the special services of Iran and Armenia.

"Seven members of the 'Revenge 313' group, Elgun Agayev, Ruslan Aliyev, Yusif Mirzayev, Elvin Jafarov, Savalan Huseynli, Bilal Sujaddinli, Maharrameli Musayev, as well as other members of the group, were detained and submitted for investigation," the Azerbaijani Interior Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

It added that members of the group wrote radical religious slogans on the streets near government buildings, and shared their images on social media "with the aim of creating confusion among citizens."

The ministry also mentioned Rufulla Akhundzade, and his son Almursal Akhundzade, who cooperated with the Iranian special services to organize armed riots in the country in order to "forcefully change the constitutional structure" of Azerbaijan.

The two people, it added, worked to organize assassination attempts, and devised a plan to establish gangs through secret groups on messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and others.

Akhundzade, it said, also planned to take the members of the group to Iran for "military training and illegal armed-extremist organizations in the name of receiving religious education."

In a separate statement, Azerbaijan's State Security Service said two other citizens, Rashad Ahmadov and Rovshan Musa Amirov, were arrested on charges of working for Armenia's special services and committing treason.

Tensions have risen between Azerbaijan and Iran over a series of incidents, including an attack on the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tehran and military support to Armenia. Tehran, on the contrary, accuses Baku of cooperation with Israel.

Meanwhile, relations between Baku and Yerevan have been tense since 1991 when Armenia occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan and seven adjacent regions.

Most of the territory was liberated by Baku during a war in the fall of 2020, which ended after a Russian-brokered peace agreement. Dialogue for the normalization of ties, however, continues.