PanARMENIAN.Net
There are no POWs and hostages NKR
16.01.2009 14:59 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Azerbaijani State Commission on POWs, the
missing and hostages has recently presented its final report of 2008,
in which it has particularly mentioned that 39 Azerbaijanis are
allegedly in captivity in Nagorno Karabakh.
The NKR State Commission on POWs, the missing and hostages qualifies
this message as a regular disinformation, aimed at discrediting the
NKR authorities, and as an attempt to mislead the international
community. The NKR State Commission declares with responsibility that
there are no POWs and hostages in the territory under the jurisdiction
of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic.
The NKR authorities, strictly following the principles of the Geneva
conventions, after the military phase of the conflict with Azerbaijan,
have repatriated all the hostages to the Azerbaijani party, via the
intermediary of the International Committee of Red Cross
(ICRC). Presently, the NKR corresponding bodies timely inform the
offices of the ICRC and OSCE accredited in Stepanakert of any fact of
the Azerbaijani servicemen’s and civilians’ desertion to Karabakh, who
are later repatriated to the Azerbaijani authorities without any
precondition. Representatives of the mentioned international
organizations have free access to all the institutions of detention,
which rules out the possibility of hiding the fact of the Azerbaijani
hostages’ being in the NKR territory.
The NKR State Commission draws attention to the fact that repeated
suggestions of the republic’s leadership to establish direct contacts
with the analogous structure of Azerbaijan for solving the issue of
POWs, the missing and hostages effectively, have not been given an
adequate answer by official Baku. Moreover, the Azerbaijani
authorities keep on politicizing such a humanitarian and sensitive
issue as the searching of the missing and the release of hostages, for
getting doubtful propaganda dividends. The recent fact of spreading
the wittingly false information evidently testifies to this.