Azerbaijan pulls out weightlifters following 'barbaric' flag-burning at weightlifting championship in Armenia

Azerbaijan said on Saturday it was withdrawing its athletes from an international weightlifting competition hosted in the capital of rival Armenia after a flag-burning incident. The two ex-Soviet Caucasus nations are locked in a decades-long dispute over Azerbaijan's Armenian-majority region of Nagorno-Karabakh. They went to war twice -- in the 1990s and most recently in 2020 -- over the mountainous breakaway region.

Footage from the opening ceremony of the European Weightlifting Championships in Yerevan on Friday showed a man running to the stage, snatching Azerbaijan's flag from a flag-bearer and setting it on fire.

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Azerbaijan's ministry of youth and sports said in a joint statement with the National Olympic Committee that it decided to bring its athletes home following what it described as a "barbaric act" at the ceremony.

"In conditions when such an atmosphere of hatred prevails in Armenia, security is not ensured, the normal participation of Azerbaijani athletes in competitions is impossible due to the psychological pressure," the statement said. "Politicising sport is absolutely unacceptable," it added, urging the European Weightlifting Federation to impose sanctions on Armenia.

Azerbaijan's foreign ministry said it "strongly condemns" the incident and called on Armenia to "immediately bring to justice" the person responsible.

Local media said Armenian police briefly detained the man responsible, designer Aram Nikolyan, and, according to his lawyer, he was released without charges.

Armenia's ministry of education, science, culture and sports in a statement denied there were any risks for athletes taking part in the competition.

"The incident that occurred during the opening ceremony, which was resolved very quickly, has nothing to do with guarantees of safety of the athletes," it said.