Tortured and shot: crimes in Edilli will not go unpunished In the wake of a gruesome discovery

A new terrible find in Azerbaijan is the remains of Azerbaijani soldiers shot in the village of Edilli in the Khojavand region, liberated from Armenian occupation. It forces again to rethink the horrors of war and the phenomenon of Armenian barbarism, which is confirmed by a new secret burial. Why the Armenians killed with such cruelty and sophisticated cynicism and, apparently, are ready to continue killing their Azerbaijani neighbors is a question not only for representatives of international judicial authorities, doctors, and psychologists, the entire international community should think about it.

Amid claims of some fake videos of "crimes" by the Azerbaijani military circulated by the Armenian side, Azerbaijan once again faced a terrible reality. The evidence of crimes could not be hidden in the damp earth - and this is by no means a video of dubious quality. Even those unfamiliar with forensic expertise can see and understand this nightmare: the remains of 12 people in the mass grave in Edilli village of Khojavand region have distinctive signs - hands and feet are tied with wire and rope, which means they were abused before being killed. As the experts assert during preliminary acquaintance with a terrible discovery, these are remains of bodies of our servicemen whom Armenians shot at point-blank range, and then dumped their bodies in a common grave. The most shocking thing is that the monsters did not even bother to mark the place of burial, on the contrary, everything was done to hide the traces of their crimes once and for all.

Of course, all this is nothing new to Azerbaijani society. After the 44-day war in 2020, several mass graves of Azerbaijanis were found in the Shusha, and Kalbajar districts, on Mount Farrukh, and others. And after the already documented Armenian atrocities - the 1992 genocide of peaceful Azerbaijanis in Khojaly and the villages of Kalbajar, which has been known to the world for thirty years, it became clear that as the liberated territories were recovered from the 44-day war, many more mass graves of tortured Azerbaijanis could be discovered.

However, Edilli is a particularly tragic place that could well be compared with Nazi Buchenwald or Auschwitz. On the basis of witness accounts and other evidence, it was established that hostages and prisoners of war were brought to Edilli from peaceful villages and the battlefield. There was a distribution point here, from where prisoners were sent on to other camps or shot. Some were left at Edilli and used for forced labour. In particular, hostages and prisoners of war were forced to pave roads between villages with stones from Azerbaijani settlements destroyed by vandals.

Hikmet Hajiyev, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan - Head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Administration, shared a post on Twitter about a mass grave discovered in Khojavand. "A mass grave of Azerbaijani servicemen tortured and killed during the First Karabakh War was discovered in the village of Edilli. Edilli was used by Armenia as a POW camp. Some 4,000 Azerbaijani soldiers and civilians went missing. Armenia refuses to disclose the locations of the mass graves," the tweet says.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, a total of 4,500 people went missing as a result of the Karabakh conflict, while about 4,000 of them were Azerbaijani citizens, and Armenia still does not report anything about the fate of these people. However, it is clear that Azerbaijan, systematising all these tragic findings, has every reason to accuse Armenia of planned genocide of Azerbaijanis during the First Karabakh War, which is almost no different from the fascist idea of "pure Aryanism", which is to exterminate everyone who did not fit the gene pool of the "new" race.

There is much to say and think about Armenian radicalism and separatism. Its history is rich in bloody events, the killing of innocents. However, when one thinks about Armenian heresy and crimes on Azerbaijani soil, one is horrified all over again. "Why" and "for what" - still we want to hear at least some answer from those who committed these atrocities, to understand what misanthropic motives drove them. And then, after what they had done, how could they go on living?

The Office of the Prosecutor General of Azerbaijan reports that, during the First Karabakh War, the Armenian armed forces and the armed formations committed gross violations of the norms and principles of international humanitarian law, including the requirements of article 17 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field, of August 12, 1949. And there are many other international provisions as well.

It is difficult to grasp this horror in a purely logical way, leaving aside the establishment of crimes in the framework of formal legal norms and conventions. To comprehend it like a man, like a human being. Yes, of course, it is clear that there are no wars without losses, and on the battlefield, where human life is devalued to the maximum, everything happens. A soldier may shoot his enemy, even if he asks for mercy and raises his hands in the air - all this happens in a state of affect.

But what was done by Armenian vandals and fiends during the First Karabakh War was quite different - it was cold-blooded murder, which was carried out thoughtfully and deliberately, possibly with sadistic pleasure. Indeed, according to eyewitness accounts, the Armenian military enjoyed torturing Azerbaijani civilians and military personnel and killed them with extreme cruelty. And not just a few captives, but whole groups of people. Moreover, the captured Azerbaijani soldiers and officers were treated by Armenians with particular cruelty, seeing in them a threat and a sign of their defeat.

Azerbaijani servicemen, who miraculously returned from Armenian captivity alive, tell unthinkable things about what happened in Armenian prisons. All this can be found on the internet, and researched in detail.

It is a proven fact, one way or another, that Azerbaijanis in Armenian captivity during the First Karabakh war were generally held in inhumane conditions. They were routinely beaten, often to mutilate them further. Many died immobilised and in terrible agony. Former captives say that they were hit with wooden sticks or the butts of automatic rifles for fun.

The demonstration executions of Azerbaijani servicemen were also quite usual for Armenian fiends in those days. They were usually carried out as an act of punishment when Armenians were defeated in some part of the front. Perhaps the 12 soldiers in Edilli were shot on one of these days.

I would like to stress that our country, in spite of the Armenian atrocities, has always treated the detained Armenians in the most humane and objective manner. No Armenian saboteur or military officer detained and imprisoned in Azerbaijan has ever complained about inappropriate detention conditions or attempted violence against his or her person. Yes, it is true that there have been some statements by Armenians with negative comments about their time in Azerbaijani prisons. But these were uttered when the captives were released and found themselves on the Armenian side. A few days after their release. It is quite clear what kind of pressure was exerted on them to fabricate such "confessions". Yet today, for example, Vardan Tadevosyan, press secretary of the Investigative Committee of Armenia, said that the Armenian soldiers who returned home the day before had not been tortured in Azerbaijan.

It has an explanation: Azerbaijan is as humane as possible when it comes to the treatment of prisoners of war, and the conditions in which they are held, and takes all its obligations into account. Our country is not treating the captured Armenian saboteurs like cattle, as the Armenians did with the intention of profiting from their transfer. However, Baku demands immediate and compulsory investigation and punishment of the Armenian executioners who committed torture and murder of our soldiers irrespective of the age of these crimes. But this process is advancing with certain difficulties for Azerbaijan - over the thirty years of atrocities committed by Armenians on our land, the international community has become very indifferent to the problem. Although, it often eagerly responds to appeals by Armenians to condemn some mythical "crimes of Azerbaijan. This is indeed a biased approach.

However, Azerbaijan, having learned by experience, does not wait for years for world organisations to react, but identifies and condemns these fiends, who look so little like people. For example, during the 44-day war and subsequent operations to cleanse the liberated territories from Armenian saboteurs several such executioners were detained. They were identified by witnesses and victims. It will happen to anyone responsible for the torture and deaths of Azerbaijani soldiers and civilians. No one will go unpunished.

Condemning in conversation with Caliber.Az for the inhumane crimes committed against Azerbaijani soldiers who fought to restore justice on their own historical land, Saken Mukan, professor at the Department of Media Communication and History of Kazakhstan at MUIT, Almaty, noted that the mass graves in the village of Edilli clearly indicate that a number of international conventions on the detention of prisoners of war were violated, there is a well-thought-out murder of unarmed people who were in captivity and nevertheless had a certain status of inviolability.

"Of course, this is also a clear violation of international criminal law, and all perpetrators of such crimes should be brought before an international court if the existing world order has the political and legal force enshrined in the UN charter documents," said the political analyst.

In this sense, Mukan notes that the Armenian military in the First Karabakh War committed repeated acts of inhumane treatment of civilians and military personnel recorded by international observers.

"Unfortunately, the Armenian side did not condemn and punish the perpetrators of illegal actions during that war. This work is not being carried out even now, otherwise, the facts would say the opposite. However, all these crimes should be investigated in the light of objective data and with the involvement of international human rights organisations for a legal assessment," Saken Mukan stressed.