AZERI POW CHARGED WITH TREASON AFTER RETURN HOME

Reuters, UK
Feb 5 2007

BAKU, Feb 5 (Reuters) – An Azeri soldier taken prisoner by Armenian
forces has been charged with treason after returning home, prosecutors
in Azerbaijan said on Monday.

Azerbaijan is officially in a state of war with neighbouring Armenia
and the two sides’ forces patrol a tense ceasefire line around the
disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Prosecutors said soldier Vyusal Garajayev was captured on Dec. 7
last year by ethnic Armenian separatists who, with Armenian support,
control most of Nagorno-Karabakh. He was returned home on Dec. 23
under the auspices of the Red Cross.

"(Vyusal) Garajayev, born in 1988, has been arrested. A criminal case
has been opened against him on the basis of article 274 (treason),"
a spokesman for Azerbaijan’s military prosecutors, Afraim Tahmazov,
told Reuters on Monday.

He did not specify what the soldier was alleged to have done to
betray his country while in captivity. The Armenian side could not
immediately be reached for comment.

More than 35,000 people died in a conflict over the mountainous
territory about half the size of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

A ceasefire was agreed in 1994.

The region is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but
nearly all of it, as well as a large swathe of Azeri territory on
its borders, has been controlled by the separatists since the war.