As the Ministry of Defense spokesperson Shushan Stepanyan announced, officer Gurgen Alaverdyan got lost due to poor weather conditions on August 22nd while checking the military base.
After this, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense announced that the officer was the commander of a saboteur-spy unit. The Armenian Ministry of Defense denied this and emphasized that Azerbaijan is presenting a man who got lost as a saboteur. Azerbaijan shared a video of Gurgen Alaverdyan where he was being treated very poorly.
“This treatment on behalf of Azerbaijan, a country fighting in a war that has taken on several international conventions on prisoners of war, is a strict violation of international norms. This is especially true when we consider that they recorded and published the video in an inappropriate manner,” Turkish and Kurdish affairs specialist Karen Hovhannisyan told Aravot Daily. “They are keeping him in poor conditions. They covered his eyes with his hat and insulted his ethnic dignity- his Armenianness- and they also made sexual insults,” Hovhannisyan emphasized. “We cannot call Gurgen Alaverdyan a prisoner of war because he was not taken as a prisoner during a war. He simply got lost. Treating an individual like that is one of the worst humanitarian violations,” he added.
Luiza Sukiasyan
