Azerbaijan welcomes Armenia's willingness to cooperate in search for missing persons

The Azerbaijani State Commission for Prisoners and Missing Persons and Hostages welcomes the statement of a similar structure in Armenia on its readiness to cooperate to clarify the fate of persons missing in hostilities.

The Azerbaijani side considers it advisable to combine efforts in this direction, the Azerbaijani State Commission said in a statement.

The press release also notes that Azerbaijan, with the close participation of the Russian peacekeeping contingent and the International Committee of the Red Cross, provided comprehensive assistance to the Armenian side in conducting search operations in the territories where military operations were conducted. After the 44-day war, the bodies of 1,713 people were found and transferred to Armenia.

In addition, the bodies of 154 people found after clashes on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border on September 12-14, 2022, and 173 more bodies after the end of the anti-terrorist operation in Karabakh on September 19-20, 2023, were handed over to the Armenian side.

In the first Karabakh War, 3,890 Azerbaijani citizens were registered as missing. As of January 1, the remains of only 25 of them had been identified, the State Commission of Azerbaijan notes.

The statement particularly focuses on the fate of 54 Azerbaijanis who went missing in the first Karabakh war, whose captivity was officially confirmed by international structures.

"According to the data received in 1998-2001, 54 Azerbaijani citizens who were captured and held hostage during the first Karabakh War were visited by representatives of the ICRC in places of detention in the Republic of Armenia and in the occupied territories of the Republic of Azerbaijan and were officially registered by this structure.

Subsequently, the bodies of 17 of them were taken to Azerbaijan, 33 people were declared dead in detention facilities, but their bodies were not returned. It was not possible to determine the further fate of 4 people at all," the message emphasizes.

It is necessary to involve field commanders and other authorized persons with sufficient information and who led the fighting on the part of Armenia before 1994 in the process of searching for burial sites.

"As a state commission, we once again declare our readiness to cooperate with the relevant structures of the Republic of Armenia in the field of ensuring the search for missing persons belonging to both sides, in accordance with the principles of accuracy, transparency and in the atmosphere of mutual trust," the statement concludes.

* Earlier, on January 27, the Armenian Commission on Prisoners, Hostages and Missing Persons proposed to Azerbaijan to intensify cooperation in the search for missing persons.

"Since the beginning of the 1990s, 993 citizens of Armenia and Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh have been missing in the 44-day war of 2020 and after that. Armenia is interested in clarifying their fate," the statement of the Armenian side said.

Yerevan, according to the Armenian side, since November 2020, has handed over topographic materials to Baku about the possible locations of the bodies of 51 Azerbaijanis who died in the 44-day war, as well as the bodies of about 50 people who died in the 90s.