President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan pardoned 20 prisoners on Wednesday, including a French national jailed on espionage charges, shortly after the European Union removed Russian-Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov from its sanctions list.
Among those granted clemency under Aliyev’s decree was Martin Ryan, a French citizen arrested in late 2023 and sentenced by an Azerbaijani court in March to 10 years in prison.
The pardons followed a broader diplomatic deal struck after France lobbied for Usmanov's delisting. The E.U. Council announced Tuesday that it had also lifted sanctions against Mikhail Fridman, a Russia-connected businessman, while extending restrictions—including travel bans and asset freezes—on roughly 3,000 other individuals and entities for three years in response to the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine.
