Azernews.Az

YEREVAN – Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian has claimed that the Armenian saboteur found hanged in custody after being seized in Azerbaijan last month was killed by the Azerbaijani side.

Nalbandian went as far as accusing the Azerbaijani authorities of "acting like terrorists", Armenian media reported.

"The ‘murder’ of 20-year-old Armenian citizen Manvel Saribekyan is another example of Azerbaijani terror," he alleged in parliament address on Wednesday.

Saribekyan was nabbed near the north-western part of the frontline on September 11. The other three intruders attempting to infiltrate managed to escape. During a questioning he testified that the Armenian servicemen had been trained to stage an explosion at a school in Azerbaijan. Early on Tuesday, Saribekyan hanged himself after tying his shirt and a bed-sheet, Azerbaijan’s military authorities said. A forensic expertise did not show any signs of violence on Saribekyan’s corpse.

Elkhan Polukhov, the spokesman for the Azerbaijan Foreign Ministry, said Armenia, which is linked to ASALA and other terror groups, cannot accuse any country of terror.

"As a representative of a country that was committing terrorism even before gaining independence and continues to do so to this day, Nalbandian is turning a blind eye to the acts of terror perpetrated by Armenians in Azerbaijan and in every corner of the world. I would like to remind Nalbandian that as far as back as 1988, terrorism that erupted against Azerbaijan resulted in hundreds of deaths. The staged explosions targeting civilians in the subway, on ferries and railway stations show the real face of Armenian terror."

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict for two decades. OSCE-brokered peace talks kicked off after a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a shaky cease-fire in 1994. Armenian armed forces continue to occupy over 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory. The ceasefire accord was signed in 1994, but peace talks have been largely fruitless so far. Sporadic clashes on the frontline continue.

Meanwhile, the U.S, Russian, and U.S. co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group that seeks to mediate a solution to the Karabakh conflict and UN experts arrived on Thursday in Khankandi, the center of the self-proclaimed Nagorno Karabakh republic to begin a "field-assessment mission" of the situation in the Armenia-occupied territories of Azerbaijan around the rebel region.