Official: Armenia returns 147 human remains to Azerbaijan
By Vugar Khalilov
Armenia has so far returned 147 human remains to Azerbaijan, head of the Azerbaijani Military Prosecutor's Office special investigations department Emil Taghiyev has said.
"[Some] 3,890 Azerbaijani citizens went missing during the First Karabakh War. Biological samples taken from the missings' family members are used to identify the remains," Taghiyev told in an interview with Trend.
He added that the remains were jumbled since the bodies were buried in mass graves during the first Karabakh war (1988-1994).
They returned the remains, conducted an investigation with the assistance of a forensic medical specialist, and assigned proper molecular genetic testing to the identification.
The fate of Azerbaijani citizens who have been missing for approximately 30 years can be clarified as a result of testing of the remains to be removed from mass graves (based on information provided by Armenia).
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry stated on February 8 that humanitarian issues were one of the main topics of a February 4 virtual meeting attended by French President Emanuel Macron, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, European Council President Charles Michel, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
At the meeting, Aliyev underlined that Armenia had to provide information about the mass graves of 3,890 missing Azerbaijani citizens (including 71 children, 267 women and 326 elderly people). The presidents of France and the European Council both supported this issue.
Armenia, which is responsible for determining the fate of about 4,000 missing Azerbaijani citizens, promised to cooperate in this matter.
However, Armenia's later denial of its international humanitarian obligations, as well as promises made during the abovementioned meeting, is completely outside the moral, ethical, and legal framework in light of Azerbaijan's discovery and return of the bodies of 1,708 Armenian servicemen, the ministry said.
It should be mentioned that in the 20th century, Armenians perpetrated systematic crimes and atrocities against Azerbaijanis to break the spirit of the nation and annihilate the Azerbaijani people of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Khojaly genocide is regarded as the culmination of Armenian mass murders.
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