Member of the Armenian National Assembly Naira Zohrabyan has appealed to women leaders in Europe, requesting to call on Azerbaijan to release Lebanese Armenian Maral Najarian from captivity.

Maral Najaryan moved to Berdzor, Artsakh, after the explosion in the port of Beirut. She was taken captive on the Goris-Stepanakert road on her way to Berdzor to transport her personal belongings to Yerevan before the region would be handed over to Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan has officially confirmed the fact of Maral’s captivity, and she is supposedly kept in the Gubistan prison, about 70 km from Baku.

Naira Zohrabyan from the opposition Prosperous Armenia faction has appealed to European women leaders, human rights activists and all organizations dealing with women’s issues to force Azerbaijan to return Maral and all prisoners of war.

“I have appealed to all women at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to call on Azerbaijan and Aliyev’s wife, a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, to return Maral Najaryan, a civilian, to Armenia immediately,” Zohrabyan said in a Facebook post.

“I have appealed to UNESCO, which gives the title of a goodwill ambassador to the wife of the president of a war criminal country, so that UNESCO demands within its mandate that its Azerbaijani goodwill ambassador not spit on international humanitarian law and keep Armenian prisoners of war and Maral Najaryan as a “political currency,” to  immediately return all prisoners of war to Armenia under the 3rd Geneva Convention,” Zohrabyan said.