INFORMATION OF THE NKR STATE COMMISSION ON PRISONERS OF WAR (POWS), THE MISSING AND HOSTAGES

Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
2009-01-20 16:59

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, being 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). At
present, 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 o ut 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.