Recently, Madat Guliyev, Chief of the State Security Service of the Republic of Azerbaijan, announced at the session of the State Commission on Prisoners, Hostages and Missing Persons that tombs of 127 missing Azerbaijani soldiers were discovered. During the session, it was also announced that some activities have been conducted with the International Committee of the Red Cross to clarify the data on the missing people and make relevant corrections on the list. According to the same source, the fates of 213 missing persons are identified, their names were removed from the lists, it was also revealed that prior to the establishment of the ceasefire, 11 people were missing. Nothing is reported as to where these tombs were discovered.
In an interview with Aravot.am, Taron Hovhannisyan – a Turkologist, expert in Azerbaijani studies and expert of razm.info website, said that these tombs are believed to belong to their declared missing people during the years of the first Artsakh war. According to Hovhannisyan, the lists of the Azerbaijani missing people have a lot of gaps and many inconsistencies. Azerbaijan also mentions about the gaps on the lists. “In December 2014, the same head of the Committee in an interview with Azerbaijani “Interfax” stated there are 4016 missing by their lists: this is during the war years and after the ceasefire until December 2014. The same person had also said that they can prove the fact of 877 missing people by some data. And they do not have any documents about the rest. He also mentioned that it is quite possible to have replications of the names, it is also possible that these people had gone to different countries of the former Soviet Union and they have no or incorrect information about them. In other words, in essence, he has also mentioned and it derives from their words that the lists are unclear and there are unsubstantiated things,” – said Taron Hovhannisyan. In his words, during those days, the same Azerbaijani official was speaking that allegedly they have released 1428 people from Armenian captivity, this time, they are talking about 1436 persons. “This means that they have released only 8 people is from December 2014 to date, but on the list of the same released people, they mention the name of the Azeri woman who had crossed the border in June this year, allegedly they have released her. In fact, the woman had crossed our border at her own and our people had returned her in 2 days.”
Taron Hovhannisyan believes that these contradicting each other data and statements by Azerbaijan speak of the fact that there is an outflow of false data, with which they are trying to achieve results and so far, as Hovhannisyan said, he had not found any evidence by the Azerbaijani side. As a substantiation of his words, Mr. Hovhannisyan noted that the Azerbaijani side had stated until now that there are many people after the first Artsakh war, whose tracks they cannot find, they cannot find their tombs, and allegedly, they have found the graves of 127 people but do not report any specific data. “Looking at their reports and data, it becomes clear that this could be just an attempt to show they are working, allegedly this committee is working as they are getting pretty serious funding and they have a problem to show outcome,” said Hovhannisyan.
In his words, there are so many gaps in the same Azerbaijani article, so many data is presented and the numbers are unclear, “There are many inconsistencies. They say that after the hostilities in April, the Armenian side had handed the corpses of 13 servicemen, a few lines below, they are writing that until the verbal agreement on the ceasefire, they had 11 missing, and these 11 missing persons are not seen in the total number. They were saying that there were 4016 missing, now they say – 3803 and have identified the fate of 213 persons. The consider the corpses of Azerbaijani soldiers left on our side missing persons, but later they had received the corpses. In short, an attempt of deceit is made by them.”
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Nelly BABAYAN
