MFA: Bloody Sumgayit events provocation planned against Azerbaijan

By Vafa Ismayilova

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Leyla Abdullayeva has described the 1988 bloody events in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgayit as a provocation planned against Azerbaijan, Trend reported on 28 February.

Abdullayeva made the remarks in a comment on the Armenian Foreign Ministry's statement accusing Azerbaijan of events in Azerbaijan’s Sumgayit city.

"Unfortunately, the issue is again about the statement of the Armenian side, full of lies and fabrications. We have repeatedly responded to the groundless claims of the Armenian side regarding the events in Sumgayit and today I would like to emphasize once again that the bloody events in Sumgayit of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic in late February 1988 were a deliberate and well-planned provocation against Azerbaijan," Abdullayeva said.

Abdullayeva underlined that the Prosecutor-General's Office of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics filed a criminal case over the incident.

"The investigation was carried out. As a result of the investigation, the perpetrators and accomplices of the riots, the victims and those injured - a total of 32 people were identified. I would like to emphasize that six of those injured were Azerbaijanis," she added.

The spokesperson stressed that the investigation revelaed that ethnic Armenian Eduard Grigoryan led the campaign.

"Numerous testimonies of Armenians living in Sumgayit were collected about Eduard Grigoryan, an Armenian by nationality, who led this campaign (movement, riots), personally killed six people and raped three women of Armenian origin. Grigoryan, sentenced upon a court decision to 12 years in prison, was sent to Armenia to serve his sentence, and then was released," Abdullayeva said.

Earlier, Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmat Hajiyev said that in 1988 Armenia's intelligence agencies "through Armenian criminal Eduard Grigoryan, had organized pogroms of the civilian Armenian population in Sumgayit and later blamed Azerbaijan for that".