ArmInfo. Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Alen Simonyan proposed to organize the return of Armenian POWs held in Azerbaijan under the auspices of the CIS. He stated this during a meeting of the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly, after the speech of Speaker of the Azerbaijani Parliament Sagiba Gafarova.
"My counterpart (from Azerbaijan, ed. note) can call them pirates of Nagorno-Karabakh, criminals. But but they are simply people who got lost and accidentally crossed into the territories that came under the control of Azerbaijan after the signing of the statement dated November 9-10", the RA NA Speaker said.
Informing that the parents of the prisoners daily demand to resolve the issue with the prisoners, Simonyan also suggested that the Azerbaijani side at the next meeting of the CIS PACE bring Armenian prisoners with them. It should be noted that during the meeting, the head of the Azerbaijani parliament, Sahiba Gafarova, accidentally admitted about Azerbaijan's war crimes. At first, she announced that the Azerbaijani military "committed" and then corrected it by adding "never committed" war crimes. Accusing Armenia of all grave sins, as usual, Gafarova said that, unlike Armenia, "Azerbaijan takes its international obligations seriously" and "allegations" related to crimes committed during military operations are investigated by the relevant state institutions. <As reported by the Prosecutor General's Office on September 17 and October 2, 2022, detailed investigations are currently being carried out regarding footages distributed anonymously on the Internet, which are claimed on social networks as illegal actions of the Azerbaijani army," she said.
In her speech, she also touched upon Nagorno-Karabakh. Referring to the statement of President Ilham Aliyev, she noted that the Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh are citizens of Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijan does not intend to discuss its internal issues with this or that country. The rights and security of the Armenian population will be ensured in accordance with the Constitution of Azerbaijan. At the same time, the head of the Parliament of the Republic of Azerbaijan emphasized: "We do not have the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, we have the Karabakh region, and its upland and lowland parts are parts of this region." In response to such statements, Alen Simonyan asked his Azerbaijani counterpart a rhetorical question: "If there is no Nagorno-Karabakh, then what did the Azerbaijani president sign under, if the document of November 9-10 mentiones "Nagorno-Karabakh" very clearly.
Declaring that people who are informed about the real state of things are taking part in the meeting, he noted that he does not intend to respond point by point to all the statements of the Azerbaijani side.
The Speaker of the Armenian Parliament limited himself to just one fact, recalling the "heroism" of Azerbaijani soldier Ramil Safarov, who killed a sleeping Armenian officer with an ax, after which he was recognized as a national hero in his homeland. "That's all you need to know in order to have an idea about the cynicism, the actions of this or that state," Simonyan noted.
Earlier, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, in his microblog on Twitter, said: "There are 777 missing Armenians from the 1st Nagorno Karabakh war, 217 from the 2nd NK war, and 29 missing Armenians from the September 13th aggression of Azerbaijan against Armenia. We hope Azerbaijan will cooperate in clarifying the destiny of our compatriots," Pashinyan wrote on his Twitter.
It should be noted that on October 2, a video was circulated in Telegram channels in which Azerbaijani servicemen shoot unarmed Armenian soldiers. The incident, as human rights activists have already found out, took place in the direction of positions near Ishkhanasar, during a large-scale military aggression of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, unleashed on the night of September 13. Let us add that this is not the first such case when the enemy forces torture and subject Armenian prisoners of war and civilians to inhumane treatment.