Commander of Second Army Corps Mais Barkhudarov dismissed from service

The commander of the Second Army Corps, Lieutenant General Mais Barkhudarov, has been dismissed by the order of the head of state.

This was reported by a number of pro-government media. The Defense Ministry does not comment on these reports.

In turn, military sources confirmed to Turan Agency the fact of Barkhudarov's dismissal.

The same sources said that the reason for the dismissal of the young general (48 years old) and hero of the Second Karabakh War is his involvement in massive violations of the rights of servicemen in the scandalous ‘Terter case’.

*In May 2017, the Ministry of Defense, the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor General's Office and the State Security Service of Azerbaijan announced the detention of members of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces on charges of espionage in favor of Armenia.

In 2019, it became known that mass torture and confessions were used against the accused.

Hundreds of soldiers and officers serving in Terter, Agdam, Beylagan and other directions suffered. During these interrogations 9 people were tortured to death, 25 people sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

After numerous and massive protests of the relatives of the victims, the authorities were forced to start a review of the case.

Only in 2021, the country's Military Prosecutor Khanlar Veliyev acknowledged the existence of mass tortures and reported the initiation of criminal proceedings. In December of the same year, the General Prosecutor's Office, the Interior Ministry and the State Security Service acknowledged the tortures and crimes and launched a new investigation. During the investigation, victims named the names of Generals Hikmet Hasanov (dismissed earlier), Mais Barkhudarov, and other high-ranking officers of the Ministry of Defense as initiators of tortures and accusations of non-existent espionage.

In 2022, the Prosecutor General appealed to the plenum of the Supreme Court with a proposal to review the sentences of 19 convicts from the list of victims of the ‘Terter Case’ and to drop the charges against them.

At the same time, a number of officers involved in tortures and illegal actions against innocent soldiers were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment.