ANCA calls on US Department of Justice to prosecute Aliyev security   for attacking protesters in Washington

ArmInfo.The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) has called on the US Department of Justice and local law enforcement to prosecute members of  Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's security detail videotaped  attacking peaceful protesters outside the site of  President  Trump's  inaugural Board of Peace summit in Washington.

As noted in a statement distributed by the ARF Dashnaktsutyun press  service, the demonstrators had gathered to protest Aliyev's  tyrannical rule and brutal repression of political dissidents. 

"This attack  drew immediate comparisons to the 2017 Sheridan Circle  incident in Washington, D.C., when Turkish President Recep Tayyip  Erdogan ordered his security detail to physically assault Kurdish and  Armenian protesters outside the Turkish Ambassador's residence.  Aliyev's bodyguards beating protesters on the streets of Washington  DC is Sheridan Circle 2.0 - a petro-dictator's thugs assaulting  Americans on U.S. soil. Aliyev ethnically cleansed Artsakh, drove  150,000 indigenous Armenians from their homeland at gunpoint, and  today holds Armenian prisoners as political hostages. Today he  brought that same brutality to our streets. ANCA has long called for  sanctions on Azerbaijan for exactly this reason - dictators who face  no consequences will invariably export their violence wherever they  go," stated ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian.

The ANCA recalled that the 2017 incident was widely condemned and  prompted a unanimous 397-0 vote in the House on H.Res.354 -  introduced by Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) and  Ranking Democrat Eliot Engel (D-NY) - condemning the violence and  calling for the perpetrators to be charged and prosecuted under U.S.  law.

" A grand jury ultimately indicted 15 Turkish security officials on  charges of conspiracy to commit a crime of violence. But in March  2018, the Department of Justice dropped charges against eleven of the  fifteen defendants - just days before high-level meetings between  Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Erdogan in Ankara," the ANCA  noted.

The ANCA emphasized that the new attack has already been condemned by  Congressional Armenian Caucus Co-Chair Frank Pallone and  Representative Laura Friedman. According to the source, they called  on the US President and the Department of Justice to ensure that  those responsible do not escape punishment and are immediately held  accountable.

"For decades, successive administrations have emboldened Azerbaijan's  authoritarianism by waiving Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act -  providing military assistance and energy investments while refusing  to hold Baku accountable for mounting repression at home, war crimes  in Artsakh, and the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh's  indigenous Armenian Christian population. That cycle of appeasement  and impunity has now come to the streets of Washington, DC," the ANCA  noted.