A soldier died in Kalbajar, but relatives do not believe in his suicide

Baku/09.02.22/Turan: On January 8, in Baku, near the Ministry of Justice, a resident of the Arkivan village of the Masalli region of Azerbaijan, Sariya Zohrabova, held a single picket demanding justice in the investigation into the death of her son Ilkin Zohrabov, born in 2021.

Zohrabov, a conscript, a participant in the Karabakh war, awarded the medal "For the Liberation of Kalbajar", died under unclear circumstances from a bullet shot at a post in Kalbajar. He was to be demobilized in eight days. According to the claims of military investigation, on March 22, 2021 Zohrabov being tortured to suicide by gizir (ensign) Matlab Hajiyev, shot himself. In the criminal case, there is also other evidence of Hajiyev's rude attitude towards his subordinates with the use of physical force. He was arrested, brought in as an accused.

The soldier's body was handed over to the family on March 30. For eight days the deceased was in a tent, in the snow. The family believes that Hajiyev may be innocent of the death of his son. The bullet  was not in the chest, but in the back of her son, Sariya Zohrabova told Turan. "Shall I be shown how a man can kill himself by shooting himself in the back?" she asks.

"We do not demand a mandatory conviction of Hajiyev. We want an honest investigation, identification of the cause of the child's death. The military prosecutor and the investigator are leading the case to suicide, but we do not believe in it. Let them return the case from the court for additional investigation," she said.

The process on this case has been going on for 11 months in the Ter-Tersky military court. Witnesses to the death of a soldier - one soldier and a gizir, also officers of the military unit do not come to court. There are many facts that refute the version of the investigation. Our applications have been rejected. We demand that the case be returned for additional investigation, Araz Zohrabov, the uncle of the murdered man, told Turan.

Turan contacted lawyer, public defender Yusif Aliyev, who sent the text of the appeal to the court to the editorial office. According to Y. Aliyev, examination of the body of the deceased refutes the version of the investigation. The bullet entry hole on the chest is larger than the exit hole on the back. So the bullet entered from the back. A suicide can't end his life like that.

There is no ballistic examination data, there is no bullet and shell casing from the scene, it is not clear from which weapon the shot was fired. The military unit claims that weapons are not recorded for Ilkin, although the soldier served at a combat post at a distance of 150 meters from the Armenian positions, went through the entire war and was awarded a combat medal.

Traces of a surgical operation were found on the body, although Ilkin had not been operated on before being drafted into the army. The family is not satisfied with the data on the examination of the clothes of the deceased with alleged traces of gunpowder.

Finally, the most suspicious is the inscription on the hand of the deceased, made with a ballpoint pen. Allegedly, 11 days before his death, Ilkin wrote a will on his hand with a request to bury him next to his uncle's grave. The handwriting of the inscription on the hand of the deceased is fundamentally different from the handwriting on his letters home, and the inscription was not made with the same pen that the deceased had. The investigation claims that there is a video in which a soldier writes this inscription on his hand. But this video is not in the criminal case, Y. Aliyev explained.

The family suspects that the inscription on Ilkin's hand was made by another person, after the death of a soldier, in order to convince the investigation of suicide.

At the Ministry of Justice, when S. Zohrabova held a picket, she was received and suggested that the family's lawyer petition for reclassification of the criminal case from the article on coercion to suicide (Article 125 of the Criminal Code) to another article of the Criminal Code. The mother is promised a fair trial.

Turan cannot obtain information from the military prosecutor and investigator at the Ter-Ter Military Court. The next meeting of the military court of the Ter-Tersky district will be on February 23, 2022.-0-