BAKU, October 15. /TASS/. Baku has returned all Armenian prisoners of war to Yerevan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev reported on Friday at a meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the CIS in an online video conference.
"Baku had handed over all [Armenian] prisoners of war taken during the conflict earlier than Yerevan had given back Azerbaijani prisoners of war to us," the head of state emphasized. He pointed out that two weeks after inking the trilateral statement on the complete cessation of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh on November 9, 2020, members of a sabotage group that were sent behind the lines of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces and subsequently detained by Azerbaijani servicemen, "cannot, according to international conventions, be considered prisoners of war."
Aliyev added that "members of a sabotage group consisting of 62 people" were sent from Armenia's Shirak Province to Azerbaijan at the end of November 2020.
Intense clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted on September 27, 2020, with fierce battles raging in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. On November 9, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint statement on a complete ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the document, the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides maintained the positions that they had held, while several regions came under Baku’s control and Russian peacekeepers were deployed along the contact line and the Lachin corridor.