Baku: Armenian state agencies behind deliberate destruction of houses in liberated Lachin PHOTO

Azerbaijani Prosecutor-General Kamran Aliyev Aliyev has said that when Lachin was returned to Azerbaijan, Armenian state structures purposefully rendered houses unusable.

Aliyev made the remarks at an operational meeting held after the opening of the new administrative building of the Lachin district prosecutor's office on June 22, Caliber.Az reports, citing the press service of the Azerbaijani prosecutor-General’s Office.

 The meeting was also attended by the Azerbaijani president’s special representative for the Lachin district, Masim Mammadov, prosecutors and military prosecutors of the districts liberated from the long-term Armenian occupation as a result of the Patriotic War in the autumn of 2020.

Aliyev noted that before Lachin was to Azerbaijan, Armenia’s state structures deliberately rendered unusable or destroyed 1,511 out of 2020 private houses.

Of the 27 apartment buildings, 19 were completely destroyed, and eight were damaged. Out of 190 administrative buildings, 143 were completely destroyed, and 47 were damaged.

In addition, everything possible was removed from the houses - the roof, floors, doors, and windows - and what could not be removed was damaged or burned. The Armenians have done the same in the villages of Lachin.

Criminal cases were initiated on all these facts, he said.

Azerbaijan inaugurated a new administrative building of the district prosecutor's office.

The opening ceremony was attended by Prosecutor General Kamran Aliyev, the leadership of the Prosecutor's Office, and veterans.

The new building has all the conditions for the work of employees of the Lachin district prosecutor's office. It has an archive room, an office, a dining room, separate offices for investigators, etc. The building is equipped with the necessary furniture, computers and other office equipment.

During the ceremony, Aliyev stated that the opening of the new Prosecutor's Office of the Lachin District is a watershed moment for the Azerbaijani prosecutor's office.

Lachin was liberated from Armenian occupation on December 1, 2020. As part of the Great Return programme to the liberated lands, the first group of Azerbaijani citizens returned to their homes in July 2022 decades after being forcibly expelled by the Armenian armed forces in the early 1990s. Azerbaijan continues to relocate Lachin residents to ancestral lands. The country plans to return to their native homes in the Karabakh and East Zangazur economic regions about 2,000 families of IDPs by late 2023, that is about 10,000 people. Some 700 families are planning to return to the city of Lachin, and 400 families to the villages of Zabukh and Sus in the Lachin district.