Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict: Images related to war crimes are sent to international organizations

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After the September clashed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, videos of war crimes begin to circulated on social networks in recent days.

It is clear from the footage showing the Azerbaijani soldiers shooting the prisoners that the commander’s order to stop firing was not obeyed. It is assumed that the incident took place in September 2022 on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border.

Video footage of the military crimes committed against the Azerbaijani soldiers were also released.

It is not known when those images were taken. It is believed that the incident took place on the eve of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.

Hasmik Samvelyan, the press secretary of the Representative Office for International Legal Issues in Armenia, said that they have appealed to international organizations and to the European Court of Human Rights regarding the video depicting the execution of Armenian prisoners of war.

Toivo Klaar, the European Union’s special representative for the South Caucasus, wrote on his Twitter account that he was sent several videos depicting war crimes committed also against Azerbaijanis.

Klaar said that all this should be investigated and the real culprits should be brought to justice. He wrote that “the conflict has left deep wounds on both sides, and there is a need for accountability.”

The General Prosecutor’s Office of Azerbaijan has announced that the footage is being investigated by the Military Prosecutor’s Office:

“Regarding this category of videos, whether they are genuine or not, the time and place where the images in the videos were taken, the identification of the military personnel in them, as well as all other factors which are important for determining the objective truth, are being investigated.”

The General Prosecutor’s Office said that as a result of the investigation, legal measures will be taken.

In August of this year, at the meeting of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, an official of the Azerbaijani government said that 11 criminal case investigations related to the violation of humanitarian rights during the 2020 Karabakh war had been initiated.

However, there is no public information about those who are being investigated and if any of them has been convicted yet.

The fact that the Azerbaijani state was guilty of torturing Armenian captives and their deaths after torture, as well as its failure to conduct an effective investigation into these cases, is reflected in the judgments of the cases “Saribekyan and Balyan v. Azerbaijan” (2020) and “Petrosyan v. Azerbaijan” (2022) by the European Court of Human Rights .

In September 2020, there was a 44-day armed conflict between the armed forces of Azerbaijan and Armenia. A ceasefire agreement was signed at the end of the Second Karabakh War, in which about 6,000 soldiers were killed on both sides. Since then, the ceasefire between the parties has been violated many times. The parties accused each other in this regard.

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