Azerbaijan's Prosecutor General has now launched a criminal case accusing Russian police of torturing and deliberately killing the brothers. A post-mortem conducted in Azerbaijan found they died from "post-traumatic" shock after being severely beaten in custody.

By Nailia Bagirova and Lucy Papachristou BAKU (Reuters) -Post-mortems on two Azerbaijani brothers who died in Russian police custody have shown that they were beaten to death, authorities in the South Caucasus country said on Tuesday as tensions rose sharply between Moscow and Baku.