13:14, 1 April, 2022

YEREVAN, APRIL 1, ARMENPRESS. A geneticist and anthropologist debunked the Azerbaijani claims on having discovered “mass graves” of “Khojalu victims” in the village of Parukh.

The Head of Ethnogenomics Laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Biology Levon Yepiskoposyan says the images and videos released by Azerbaijan as substantiations of their claims is to say the least “unprofessional”.

Speaking to ARMENPRESS, Yepiskoposyan presented evidence which shows that the Azerbaijani claims are total fake news, and the fact that they’ve immediately deleted the images from the internet shows their unprofessionalism.

“Several grave fields had been found in that region. Would Armenians bury Azerbaijanis in those grave fields? This is ruled out,” Yepiskoposyan said.

Moreover, the skulls seen in the images clearly show them to be long shaped skulls with a flat back – typical to Armenians living in the eastern region: meaning the images showed remains of Armenians. 

Yepiskoposyan also spoke about the names released by the Azerbaijanis. “They also presented the names and surnames, dates of birth of the missing, and all are born in 1970. If we look at the skulls, none has teeth, but the teeth of young men don’t fall out in just 30 years,” he said.

The geneticist also focused on the fact that the bones which were displayed were cleaned from tissues, whereas this process takes very long time.

Yepiskoposyan said he witnessed a case like that around 10 years ago, when in north-eastern Azerbaijan mass graves were found in a pit and the Azerbaijanis again began to falsely accuse Armenians.