Afgan Mukhtarli “was detained by the employees of the State Border Service on May 29 at 22:40 after having crossed the state border illegally,” Eldar Sultanov, head of the press office of the Azerbaijani general prosecutor’s office told haqqin.az, Baku-based news agency.

Sultanov added that Mukhtarli resisted the border guards during his arrest on the territory of the Belaqani District, in North-Western Azerbaijan. 

“A large sum of money in foreign currency was seized from Mukhtarli as a result of the police search,” the press office head stressed.

Afgan Mukhtarli, an Azerbaijani investigative journalist, who went missing on May 29 from Tbilisi and appeared in a detention facility in Baku a day later, says he was forced into a car close to his house in Tbilisi by unidentified persons, whom he believes were representatives of the Georgian security services, and was later handed to Azerbaijani security officers across the border to Azerbaijan.