They said the man not identified by them was first caught by Azerbaijani soldiers deployed along the border with Armenia. They did not specify the section of the border allegedly crossed by the man.
A website close to the Azerbaijani military speculated that the Czech man may work for a Western intelligence service and be connected to the European Union’s monitoring mission deployed along the Armenian side of the long and heavily militarized frontier.
The Czech ambassador to Armenia, Petr Piruncik, categorically denied any such connection on Monday.
“I can only confirm that a Czech citizen was detained in Azerbaijan and remains in detention,” Piruncik told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Our embassy in Baku is trying to get in touch with him.”
The Armenian authorities did not comment on the alleged border crossing as of Monday evening.
The reported arrest came three days after Czech parliament speaker Marketa Pekarova Adamova’s visit to Yerevan during which she said her EU member country will press Baku to resume Western-mediated talks with Yerevan. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry responded by accusing her of spreading “Armenian lies.”
A French citizen based in Baku was arrested in December amid Azerbaijan’s heightened tensions with France denounced by Baku for siding with Armenia in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. The French Foreign Ministry accused Baku of holding the businessman, Martin Ryan, arbitrarily and demanded his immediate release.