Armenia accuses Azerbaijan of violating international humanitarian law

"Actions of Azerbaijani authorities are beyond the frames of admissibility. This is the howling violation of human rights and impudent ignoring of the elementary norms of international humanitarian law", - the leader of the Working Group under Armenian State Commission on captives, hostages and miss, Armen Kaprielyan, told ArmInfo correspondent when commenting on Azerbaijan's position on the returning problem of Armenian captives.

"More than 4 months have passed since the day when four our compatriots, by the way, all the four civilians and residents of one of the regions of Armenia, accidentally found themselves in the territory of Nakhchivan Autonomous Region of Azerbaijan and have been still kept by the Azerbaijani authorities, which have not yet explained what had happened', - Armen Kaprielyan said. He recalled that Nakhchivan authorities initiated to extradite the above mentioned four Armenian citizens to the Armenian party, but at the last moment the process was disrupted. Thus, one can suppose, here Baku interfered and is trying to give political color to the case, Kaprielyan said. But this is unprecedented violation of the norms of
International Humanitarian Law and human rights, since representatives  of Azerbaijani office of International Red Cross were not allowed to visit Armenian hostages for more than a month.

"Azerbaijanis are trying to present the incident distorting reality and disseminating disinformation allegedly about capture of "a group of Armenian spies". Press-service of Armenian Defense Ministry and me have many times disproved such statements of official authorities of Azerbaijan. We think this is a political order of the Azerbaijani authorities, and its purpose is to mislead first of all certain layer of its own society, to make look good their own armed forces - look, how effective we are and how operatively we render the spies of our enemy harmless. I reiterate once again, all this story with four Armenians is a nonsense.

Perhaps, Azerbaijanis believe they will remain unpunished after such outrage. Protracting the negotiations with the ICRC for return of captives and creating obstacles to elementary access of the International Humanitarian Organization to Armenian captives, Azerbaijanis probably hope to gain dividends in future negotiations. Any reasonable person will assure you how absurd are such tricks. We have already officially informed the OSCE Office of the developments.

Our patience has exhausted. We are determined to show the world society and all international organization how Azerbaijan ignores any legal demands of the Armenian authorities and our attempts to establish cooperation with the authorities of Azerbaijan in settling humanitarian problems", A. Kaprielyan said.

He said the same applies also to the soldier of Armenian Armed Forces Paruyr Simonyan who fell captive in May 2008.

"We have no information on Simonyan except the fact that ICRC officers managed to visit him. It is not the first case when return of Armenian soldiers is delayed, which contradicts to Geneva Convention and the agreements between Armenia and Azerbaijan on return of captives", he said.

Under the agreements, the parties pledge to return civilians immediately and servicemen within the shortest period of time after finding out the circumstances of border crossing.

It should be noted that four Armenian citizens were detained in the Nakhchivan Autunomous Republic in April of 2008. Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry states that they were members of special forces of Armenia, while the enemy refutes these words, saying that the citizens found themselves in Nakhchivan by accident. According to Armenians, the young people came to the military unit. A conflict arose between the young men and his fellow servicemen, and " the chaps" came to the unit by several cars to showdown. A squabble took place. The commander of the unit fired into the air to stop the squabble, and "the chaps" left the unit. As the young men knew that place badly, one of the cars made a turn in the wrong place and crossed the Azeri border. The Armenian Defense Minister has repeatedly promised to return the citizens to Armenia.

/ArmInfo/