Azernews.Az

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijan’s president and the country's foreign ministry, as well as other agencies constantly keep in focus the issue of releasing Dilgam Asgarov and Shahbaz Guliyev, taken hostage by Armenian militaries, said Hikmat Hajiyev, spokesman for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry.

“This issue is constantly being discussed with the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group and other participants of the negotiations [on peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict],” he told Trend on November 3.

Hajiyev noted that according to the latest information, Asgarov and Guliyev are alive and feel well.

Hajiyev mentioned that Armenia’s still holding civilians as hostages, showing such inhumanity, is another example of Yerevan’s gross violation of international humanitarian legal commitments undertaken under the relevant conventions.

“Instead of contributing to settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Armenia negatively affects the negotiations by such provocative actions,” the spokesman stressed.

Armenian forces killed an Azerbaijani citizen Hasan Hasanov and detained Guliyev and Asgarov while they were attempting to visit the graves of their relatives in Shaplar village of Azerbaijani Kalbajar district in July 2014.

Later, Guliyev and Asgarov were judged illegally by the unrecognized courts of a separatist regime in occupied Nagorno-Karabakh. Following the “court" in December 2015, Asgarov was sentenced to life imprisonment and Guliyev to 22 years.

Azerbaijan, as a country whose over 4,000 citizens were taken captive, hostage by Armenia, or went missing as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh war, has repeatedly declared its readiness to begin negotiations with Armenia. However, the Armenian side ignores that.

Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan laying territorial claims on its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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