Leaders of religious faiths ask the ECHR to assess the Hojaly tragedy

The leaders of religious confessions of Azerbaijan appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to recognize the Khojaly tragedy as an act of genocide.  "The Armenian extremists carrying out throughout the history against the Azerbaijani people policy of ethnic cleansing, material and moral terror, occupied 20% of our ancestral lands, turned into refugees and internally displaced more than a million of our fellow citizens, carrying out in the occupied Karabakh lands vandalism, destroying the monuments of our history, religion and culture. In this series of atrocities  the Khojaly tragedy became  a culmination," the statement reads.

 The document noted with regret that despite the fact that genocide was committed more than twenty years ago,  the  crimes  of the  Armenian terrorists remain unpunished, four well-known UN Security Council resolutions calling for the unconditional release of the occupied Azerbaijani lands are still outstanding.

"Addressing the religious leaders, parliaments, international organizations, the European Court of Human Rights, we encourage to do everything possible to stop the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan people, to give a principled political, legal assessment of his criminal acts and to recognize the massacre perpetrated in Khojaly as genocide," the document says.

The appeal was signed by  Sheikh-ul-Islam Pashazade, the head of the Baku and Azerbaijan Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Alexander Ischein, head of the community of Mountain Jews of Azerbaijan Melih Yevdayev,  the head  of Baku Catholic Church Vladimir Fekete.

* On February 26, 1992 the Armenian armed forces, along with military regiment  366 of the Russian Federation occupied the town of Khojaly in Karabakh, and  613 civilians  were brutally killed, 150 missing, and hundreds of people were  injured. -02D-