ArmInfo.Andrei Kovatchev, European Parliament's Standing Rapporteur on Armenia, Deputy Head of the European People's Party faction, together with MEPs Francois-Xavier Bellamy and Lucas Furlas, initiated and together with 119 other lawmakers addressed the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and President of the European Council Charles Michel with an appeal to force Azerbaijan to release Armenian prisoners of war.
According to the chairman of the parliamentary commission on European integration, deputy from the My Step faction Arman Yeghoyan, the parliamentarians in their address noted that they are talking about 72 persons, the fact of captivity of which Azerbaijan recognizes, as well as about those 112 persons, information on which the Azerbaijani side does not represent, and about those 61 persons whose capture Baku denies, but there is factual evidence of their being in captivity.
It should be noted that despite the undertaken obligations, Azerbaijan has been keeping several hundred Armenian prisoners and civilians for 6 months, refusing to return them under various pretexts. Moreover, Baku cynically declares that they returned to the Armenian side all prisoners and prisoners of war, and the rest are "terrorists". Yesterday the RA representatives at the ECHR reported that the Azerbaijani military tortured and then killed 19 Armenian military and civilians, including 4 women.