National Bolshevik Aijo to lose Latvian citizenship

  • 2023-02-06
  • LETA/TBT Staff

RIGA - The Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs has decided to strip National Bolshevik Beness Aijo of his Latvian citizenship. 

LETA was told at the Ministry of the Interior that the decision has ben taken because Aijo has received a Russian passport without renouncing his Latvian citizenship. 

As reported, the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs started a probe against Aijo last December in order to decide on his citizenship status. 

In a statement released at the end of 2022 Aijo informed that he had become a citizen of Russia. He also published pictures where he was holding a Russian passport.

Aijo, who has been residing in Russia for several years already, is wanted by Latvian law enforcement authorities for crimes like calls to end Latvia's independence. 

In February 2015, Riga Vidzeme District Court put Aijo on a list of wanted criminals for public calls to overthrow Latvia’s entire economic and political system. Aijo was supposed to stand trial in Latvia but he fled to eastern Ukraine where he joined Kremlin-backed separatist separatist fighters.

In July 2019, the State Security Service asked the prosecution office of the Riga judicial district to prosecute Aijo for illegal participation in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.

In the same year, Aijo was briefly detained in the village of Yarensk in Russia's Arkhangelsk region where he had arrived to support environmental activists protesting against the  development of a landfill.

In October 2021, Riga Regional Court upheld the jail sentence given to Aijo by the district court.