November 27, 2019 - 17:37 AMT
BBC: Azerbaijan tortured soldiers when looking for Armenian spies

Dozens of torture victims, 25 people accused of treason and nine who died from torture – this is the result of the Azerbaijani army inquiries in 2017 about espionage in favor of Armenia.

The paper says more than a hundred soldiers have become victims of torture in the Azerbaijani army. Almost nothing was known about the story since the trials of soldiers took place behind closed doors.

In May 2017, the General Prosecutor's Office of Azerbaijan, the State Security Service, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a joint statement to report the detention of soldiers "on charges of espionage in favor of the Armenian special services." And that was all the official information.

The public learnt about the mass torture of May–June 2017 only in 2019, when the details of the case gradually began to be revealed.

The case is today known as the “Tartar case”, based on the name of the region where the soldiers were brought for inquiries.

According to human rights activist Oktay Gulalyev, Nine people died in the torture chamber. By the way, no criminal proceedings were launched against five of them.