Azeri court convicts 21 over Nagorno-Karabakh guerrilla plot
Agence France Presse — English
December 22, 2004 Wednesday 3:52 PM GMT
BAKU Dec 22 — An Azeri court on Wednesday handed down jail sentences
to 21 men found guilty of trying to set up a guerrilla movement with
the aim of wresting the disputed enclave of Nagorno Karabakh from
Armenian control.
The group’s leader, Rovshan Badalov, was sentenced to 10 years
imprisonment on charges of creating an illegal armed group and
purchasing and carrying weapons, according to an AFP correspondent.
Five others, all of them Azeri nationals, were handed suspended
sentences ranging from two to four years. All five were allowed to
walk free at the end of the trial.
Several Azeri non-governmental organisations had urged Baku to release
the men, describing them as “fighters for the country’s sovereignty.”
Azerbaijan fought a war with Armenia in the early 1990s over
Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave in the heart of
Azerbaijan, that left 35,000 people dead and a million civilians
displaced.
The conflict ended with a ceasefire in 1994 that kept the enclave
under de facto Armenian control. But Baku still claims the territory,
which is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan.
Peace talks have been taking place intermittently for 10 years, under
the mediation of the Minsk Group, to hammer out a permanent solution.