Mass grave site in Shusha Horrors of war haunt unabated

A mass grave found on the premises of the former Shusha prison bears gruesome witness to one of the most tragic episodes in the three-decades-long Armenian occupation of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region. Skeletal remains uncovered on the ground of the compound are believed to belong to 17 Azerbaijani civilians and prisoners of war, kept as captives and hostages therein, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law. 

What we observe inside the former Shusha prison is an extraordinary account of human suffering. It is not just that Azerbaijanis were incarcerated here under the most inhumane conditions, but they were also executed en masse. 

The former Shusha prison has a ghastly and spectral air about it, where the walls appear to reecho with the screams of human agony. Its external walls are largely intact, but the inside is in ruins, providing a glimpse into abominable crimes, with unfading voices of anguish circulating within its precincts. There is still an unmistakable smell of death and decay in the air. 

“Excavations carried out on the site between 1-15 August have revealed the worst - that captives and hostages were tortured to death, with their bodies later being disposed of by the Armenians in a pit containing sewage water on the grounds of the prison,” stated Zaur Ismayilov, a representative of the State Commission of War, Hostages and Missing Persons of Azerbaijan.

He also added that: “nails discovered amidst the fragments of the six skeletons unearthed… suggest that the prisoners were coerced into swallowing them”.  

Emil Taghiyev, Head of the Special Investigations Department of the Military Prosecutor’s Office of Azerbaijan, who was also on the site to respond to the questions of journalists, reported that, according to preliminary investigations, those imprisoned were subjected to torture, with dogs being unleashed on them. Some infirm individuals were fed to pigs whilst still alive - a concept belonging to a diseased psychology, fuelled by hatred.

This is the second mass grave found in Shusha and the eighth on the liberated territories of Azerbaijan, with further gruesome discoveries being made in Sarijaly in Aghdam, Dashalti in Shusha, Edilli in Khojavand, Farrukh in the Khojaly region and myriad other locations. 

Around 4000 Azerbaijanis went missing during the First Karabakh War. Armenia has yet not provided any information about their destiny, although the worst was always suspected. And these mass burial sites throw light on the fate of some of these unfortunate innocents.

Emil Taghiyev told me that, after the liberation of Azerbaijani territories, over 480 human remains were uncovered in Karabakh and 300 forensic-medical and forensic DNA examinations have been conducted to ascertain their identities. 

As Azerbaijan continues to demine and rebuild, the number of identified mass grave sites is increasing exponentially. And, sadly, it looks like there is more to come. 

It is bizarre and grotesquely ironic that Armenia is currently doing its level best to prove on the global stage that some of the measures taken by Azerbaijan regarding the Lachin Road amount to genocide, which is completely unsubstantiated, as it is wilfully ignorant of its own crimes committed against Azerbaijanis during the years of occupation. 

The fate of the prisoners held in the former Shusha prison is only one bloodstained page in the vast catalogue of the tragedies of the First Karabakh War and the succeeding 30 years of the Armenian occupation of Karabakh. 

Now, in 2023, the occupation is over, but the true scale of human suffering is yet to be unveiled. Allah rehmet elesin ("Rest in peace" in Azerbaijani) for the victims and our hearts go out to their relatives whose years of wondering are reaching their tragic conclusion.