Azernews.Az

By Nazrin Gadimova

Armenia has grossly violated the Geneva Conventions and its obligations under other international documents while refusing to return the body of the Azerbaijani soldier despite the reached agreements.

Hikmet Hajiyev, the Spokesperson for Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry told media on April 18. Earlier, the Defense Ministry has confirmed the information that the dead body of the serviceman was found on the Armenia-occupied side of the contact line between the troops.

Hajiyev accused the Armenian side in inhuman and cruel treatment of those killed as a result of military operations.

“Armenia, being far from human values, exposes the corpses to torture and abuse and turns them into objects of revenge and political speculation,” he stressed, adding that as a result of Armenia’s aggression, over 4,000 Azerbaijani civilians and servicemen were captured during the 1992-1994 war, held as hostages and are still considered missing.

Armenia avoids giving information about these persons, mass graves and the people who can give testimony in connection with captives and hostages taken during the conflict.

At the same time, Armenia is not active in searching the dead bodies of its soldiers and officers, thereby showing that they are not interested in handing over the dead bodies of the servicemen to their families, the Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry reported.

Possibly, those dead bodies left by Armenians in the battlefield are the bodies of the terrorists and mercenaries conscripted as "volunteers", according to the ministry.

The ministry believes that Yerevan violates the reached agreements, undertakes actions towards increasing the tension, and thus, shows disrespect to the initiatives of the international mediators.

"Despite the previously achieved agreement on the transfer of the body of Azerbaijani soldier, the subsequent failure of Armenia in this issue shocked intermediaries on both sides of the front,” the ministry noted.

Armenia also ignores repeated warnings of intermediaries about ban on photo- and video-filming during the retrieving of bodies from the battlefield.

“Moreover, they replace these pictures and videos in social networks. Only after Azerbaijan expressed its protest to the international mediators, these videos have been removed,” the ministry’s report reads.

Meanwhile, after Azerbaijan has expressed its regret with the fact that the negotiators do not hurry to take tough measures against Armenia in this issue, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported that negotiations on the return of the body are underway.

“Currently, the ICRC is continuing dialogue with the parties to the conflict to clarify the further fate of those missing. The dialogue is conducted confidentially,” said Ilaha Huseynova, the head of Public Relations Department at the Azerbaijani representation of the ICRC.

Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war.

Large-scale hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire in 1994 but Armenia continued the occupation in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal.

Armenia refuses to implement the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on its immediate and unconditional pullout from the neighboring country's territories.

--

Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz