Azerbaijani, ICRC officials mull Azerbaijani hostages’ state
By Sara Rajabova
Azerbaijan’s high-ranking official and a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross have discussed the issue of two ethnic Azerbaijanis who were illegally taken hostage in the occupied territories last year.
Ali Hasanov, Azerbaijan’s deputy prime minister and Chairman of the State Committee for Refugees and IDPs, and Deniz Duran, the head of the Azerbaijani representation of the ICRC, exchanged views on the state of hostages - Shahbaz Guliyev and Dilgam Asgarov and Armenia’s position on this issue.
Recently, Armenian media has reported that ICRC representatives visited Azerbaijani detainees in occupied Nagorno-Karabakh once again and provided them with the opportunity to exchange family news.
Armenian special forces killed Azerbaijani citizen Hasan Hasanov and took Shahbaz Guliyev and Dilgam Asgarov hostage in the Shaplar village in the occupied Kalbajar region in July 2014, while they were visiting the graves of their relatives. Following an expedited “judicial process," Dilgam Asgarov was sentenced to life imprisonment, and Shahbaz Guliyev to 22 years in prison.
For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a conflict that emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.
A fragile ceasefire has been in place since 1994, but long-standing efforts by US, Russian, and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.
Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on its pullout from the neighboring country's territories.
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Sara Rajabova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on
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