AZG Armenian Daily #085, 12/05/2005
Terrorism
AZERI AGENT TO CONFIRM BAKU’S TERRORIST ACTS AGAINST ARMENIA
Avtandil Ioseliani Provided Azerbaijan with Information from Armenia
An employee of Azerbaijani Interior Ministry (1976-1995), Aleqper Heydar
oglu Ismailov, confirmed in a letter to Azeri Russia-language
(the original letter is on the website) that the Baku
authorities organized and partly carried out terrorist acts against
Armenians during the Karabakh war and the years that followed.
Ismailov, who is working at the Intelligence Service of Azerbaijan’s Foreign
Ministry since 1997, particularly claims in his letter that terrorist acts
were organized and carried out not only in Armenia but Georgia, Russia and
Iran as well.
On May 20 of 2004, Ismailov was called to the Ministry of National Security
were he was arrested. He was sentenced to several months of imprisonment for
national treason in favor of Russia. Ismailov specifies in his letter what
made him speak to the public, “I’ve already suffered 2 strokes, little time
is left for me and I think it is vital that my children learn who their
father is and how to love their fatherland. That is the reason why I want
you to publish this document”.
Ismailov confessed in the letter that while the head of the Department of
Struggle Against Interethnic Conflicts in 1991-1995, he organized and
carried out acts of sabotage: the explosions of bridges in Stepanakert and
Imir (an Azeri village in Georgia) as well as the explosion of
Georgia-Armenia gas pipeline.
Ismailov confessed that he managed to place 30 kg of trotyl in Erebuni Hotel
in Yerevan in 1993. He noted that he blew up two Armenian offices in Kuban
and Stavropol acting on behalf of Kazaks; later on he exploded the
publishing house of anti-Armenian Kuban Harold newspaper on behalf of
Armenian ASALA.
The most fascinating claim Ismailov laid is that they organized the
explosion of the complex of government buildings downtown Yerevan for which
they made provision of 3 tones of trotyl. But the October events in 1994
(the next attempt of political upheaval) distract Baku’s attention from
their barbaric plan in Yerevan. Ismailov insists that the explosion of an
Armenian church in Tebriz in March of 1995 was being prepared but it also
failed due to political tension in Azerbaijan.
Ismailov claims also that he used more than 80 official sources for
terrorist acts against Armenia, including information from the head of
Mkhedrioni military-political group now late Jaba Ioseliani and the head of
Georgian Department of Intelligence, major general Avtandil Ioseliani.
“General Ioseliani provided me with information that he got from Armenia and
I offered him information from Chechen reconnaissance about developments in
Abkhazia”, he said.
By Tatoul Hakobian