RUSSIAN GRU SPY SENTENCED IN AZERBAIJAN.

The Supreme Court of Azerbaijan yesterday sentenced Salman Ibrahimov to 11 years in prison on charges of espionage for a foreign power. The State Security Ministry established that Ibrahimov, an ethnic Azeri resident of Georgia, was an agent of the GRU (military intelligence) section of the Russian Group of Forces in the Transcaucasus, headquartered in Tbilisi. He was assigned to collect military, political, and economic information in Azerbaijan, and was arrested there last year with intelligence equipment in his possession. Two Azerbaijani relatives of Ibrahimov, including an official of the opposition Musavat party, were each sentenced to two and a half years in prison as accomplices. (Turan, July 15) The timing of the sentence, on the heels of President Haidar Aliev’s largely inconclusive visit to Moscow (see Monitor, July 7), suggests that bilateral relations remain uneasy.

Demirel in Georgia.