Baku: Work underway to identify remains of missing Azerbaijanis
By Vafa Ismayilova
Prosecutor-General Kamran Aliyev has said that the work is underway to open unknown graves to identify Azerbaijani citizens who went missing during the first Karabakh war in the early 1990s.
He stressed that nearly 4,000 Azerbaijanis went missing during the first Karabakh war.
"After the liberation of the territories from Armenian occupation [in the 2020 Second Karabakh War], the remains were found during excavation work. DNA tests were taken from the relatives of the missing persons to identify the remains,” he noted.
The prosecutor-general stressed that over 150 missing Azerbaijanis have been identified so far.
"We cooperate in this direction with the structures of various countries. The Russian Prosecutor-General's Office is negotiating with Armenia in this direction," Aliyev said.
Some 4,000 Azerbaijanis are still missing, including 719 civilians, among them, 326 elderly, 267 women, and 71 children as a result of Armenia's aggression. Their plight still remains unknown.
A Moscow-brokered ceasefire deal that Baku and Yerevan signed on November 10 brought an end to 44 days of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani army declared a victory against the Armenian troops. The signed agreement obliged Armenia to withdraw its troops from the Azerbaijani lands that it has occupied since the early 1990s.
It should be noted that on November 1, 2021, Baku hosted the first meeting of the Council of Prosecutors-General of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-speaking States (Turkic Council).
The meeting considered the importance of expanding mutual and effective cooperation between law-enforcement agencies of the Turkic world, addressing threats to regional security, peace, and stability
After the opening speeches, the statute of the Council of Prosecutors-General of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-speaking States was signed.
The high-level meeting was attended by the prosecutors-general of Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, the Turkic Council deputy secretary-general, the president of the International Association of Prosecutors, and other representatives. The meeting was also attended by the ambassadors of the Turkic Council member countries and Hungary in Azerbaijan.
On October 3, 2009, at the 9th summit of the heads of the Turkic-speaking States in Nakhchivan, a decision was made to create the Council of Prosecutors within the framework of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-speaking States.
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