Alen Simonyan proposes to organize return of POWs held in Azerbaijan  under auspices of  CIS

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.