ARMENIA IS GOING TO DRAW SERIOUS ATTENTION OF THE WORLD COMMUNITY AT THE FACTS OF VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW NORMS AND IGNORING OF ANY ATTEMPTS TO START COOPERATION FOR HUMANITARIAN PROBLEMS RESOLVING

ArmInfo
2008-07-24 18:04:00

‘Actions of Azerbaijani authorities are beyond the frames of
allowability. This is the howling violation of human rights
and impudent ignoring of the elementary norms of international
humanitarian law’, – the leader of the Working Group under Armenian
State Commission on captives, hostages and miss, Armen Kaprielyan,
told ArmInfo correspondent when commenting on Azerbaijan’s position
on the returning problem of Armenian captives.

‘It is already for more than 4 months since the day when four our
compatriots, by the way, all the four civilians and residents of one of
the regions of Armenia, accidentally found themselves at the territory
of Naxivan Autonomous Region of Azerbaijan and have been still kept
by the Azerbaijani authorities, which have not yet explained what
had happened’, – Armen Kaprielyan said. He recalled that Naxijevan
authorities initiated to extradite the above mentioned four Armenian
citizens to the Armenian party, but at the last moment the process
was disrupted. Thus, one can suppose, here Baku interfered and is
trying to give political color to the case, Kaprielyan said. But
this is unprecedented violation of the norms of International
Humanitarian Law and human rights, since employees of Azerbaijani
office of International Red Cross were not allowed to visit Armenian
hostages for more than a month. ‘Azerbaijanis are trying to present
the incident distorting reality and disseminating disinformation
allegedly about capture of "a group of Armenian spies". Press-service
of Armenian Defense Ministry and me have many times disproved such
statements of official authorities of Azerbaijan. We think this is
a political order of the Azerbaijani authorities, and its purpose
is to mislead first of all certain layer of its own society, to make
look good their own armed forces – look, how effective we are and how
operatively we render the spies of our enemy harmless. I reiterate
once again, all this story with four Armenians is nonsense.

Maybe Azerbaijanis believe they will remain unpunished after such
outrage.

Protracting the negotiations with the ICRC for return of captives
and creating obstacles to elementary access of the International
Humanitarian Organization to Armenian captives, Azerbaijanis probably
hope to gain dividends in future negotiations. Any reasonable person
will assure you how absurd are such tricks. We have already officially
informed the OSCE Office of the developments.

ignores any legal demands of the Armenian authorities and attempts to
establish cooperation with the authorities of Azerbaijan in settling
humanitarian problems’, A. Kaprielyan said. He said the same applies
also to the soldier of Armenian Armed Forces Paruyr Simonyan who fell
captive in May 2008. We have no information on Simonyan except the
fact that ICRC officers managed to visit him. ‘It is not the first
case when return of Armenian soldiers is delayed, which contradicts
Geneva Convention and the agreements between Armenia and Azerbaijan
on return of captives’, he said. Under the agreements, the parties
pledge to return civilians immediately and servicemen within the
shortest period of time after finding out the circumstances of border
crossing. military unit. A conflict arose between the young men and
his fellow servicemen, and " the chaps" came to the unit by several
cars to showdown. A squabble took place. The commander of the unit
fired into the air to stop the squabble, and "the chaps" left the unit.

As the young men knew that place badly, one of the cars made a turn
in the wrong place and crossed the Azeri border. A total of 13 people
took part in the attack on the unit, including those in captivity. A
criminal case under the article "hooliganism" has been instituted.