Armenian citizen charged with espionage in favour of Azerbaijan

Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
9 Jun 05

[Presenter] An engineer named Andrey Maziyev is being charged with
espionage in favour of Azerbaijan. His trial started at the court of
first instance in Yerevan’s Malatia-Sebatia community today. The
prosecution is represented by Prosecutor-General Agvan Ovsepyan.

According to the bill of indictment announced at the trial today,
Armenian citizen Maziyev has handed over various types of information
about the domestic political and economic situation in Armenia and the
Nagornyy Karabakh Republic to the Azerbaijani special services over
the last five years. Maziyev has been convicted of hooliganism before.

[Correspondent over video of trial] Andrey Maziyev was born and
educated in Armenia. He has also been convicted of hooliganism
before. His relations with Arayik in prison played a great role in his
future life. After his release from prison in 1999, at the request of
his friend Arayik, Maziyev took advantage of his Russian origin and
tried to take the letter to Arayik’s relatives in Naxcivan
[Azerbaijan]. The Azerbaijani law-enforcement bodies arrested Maziyev
on the Azerbaijani-Georgian border when they saw that he is an
Armenian citizen and released him only after they received Maziyev’s
written agreement to cooperate with the Azerbaijani special services.

[Maziyev speaking in Russian with Armenian voice-over] At that moment,
I did not understand what I was doing. My only thought was to escape
from the law-enforcement bodies. Since I signed the agreement,
employees of the Azerbaijani National Security Ministry have been
following me. They threatened my family if I refused to cooperate with
them.

[Correspondent] Apart from that, Maziyev handed over information about
the domestic political and economic situation in Armenia and Karabakh,
about the military-industrial complex and the situation in the
army. He also helped the Azerbaijani National Security Ministry
prepare terrorist acts against the Armenian president.

Maziyev worked as an engineer at Zvartnots airport, knew the area
around airport very well and took photos of the president’s return
from a visit, the landing of his plane, helicopters guarding the
territory of the airport, the president and his escort. He handed over
the photos to the Azerbaijani special services.

During this period, engineer Maziyev managed to change not only his
speciality, but also his surname several times, for example, Frolov
and Kuzin. The Azerbaijani special services gave him an old Soviet
passport under the surname of Maziyev so that he could freely visit
[Azerbaijan’s] Qazax District. It became clear that the Azerbaijani
special services are very mean even in paying for such useful
services. They paid only 150-180 dollars for his services during each
visit. Maziyev paid only 18 visits.

Witnesses were also interrogated. The court of first instance of
Yerevan’s Malatia-Sebatia community will continue the trial on 13
June.