Azerbaijan has transferred all prisoners of war to Armenia, announced Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
“We have transferred all prisoners of war and the bodies of the dead to Armenia. After the war, together with the Armenian side, the peacekeeping mission and our representatives, the bodies of more than a thousand Armenian servicemen were found and handed over to the Armenian side. We keep ourselves within the norms of morality, in accordance with the norms of universal human conduct,” he said.
At the same time, he noted that more than 60 Armenian soldiers who are in Azerbaijan and appeared in the region after the end of hostilities are saboteurs and are not considered prisoners of war.
“On 20 November, a group of more than 60 people was sent from Armenia’s Shirak Province. It is unclear how they made their way through the Lachin corridor to territories controlled by the Azerbaijani army. We discovered that there are deep Armenian formations in the rear; at first we received information that they were lost and we tried to help those people return. It turned out that this was a diversionary group; as a result, we have 4 killed among the military personnel, and also one civilian casualty,” Aliyev said.
“We have carried out a counter-terrorist operation, as a result of which several saboteurs were neutralised and more than 60 were taken into custody. Today, when they try to call them prisoners of war, I think they are deliberately distorting the essence of the issue. What prisoners of war can be spoken of 20 days after the end of the war. They are saboteurs and terrorists, and any speculation by Armenia and certain other countries is inappropriate. We are carrying out periodic operations, also with unmanned aerial vehicles, and today the situation is fully under control,” added the President of Azerbaijan.
