"Massacres of Armenians in Sumgait, Baku and other cities of Azerbaijan were a genocide. Unfortunately, these events have not been investigated thoroughly and true perpetrators have not been brought to justice", the Chairman of the Board of Lawyers, participant of some legal trials on Sumgait events Ruben Sahakyan told a news conference in Yerevan. "The case on Sumgait pogroms was divided into several parts and sent to different institutions. Today we don't have full information about the organizers and perpetrators of the pogroms", Ruben Sahakyan said and added he was personally informed about 12 cases. According to the lawyer, the culprits were charged merely with organization of mass disorders. "Today it's absolutely necessary that the documents and materials on those criminal cases and part of them in Russia, were found. Only in that case we'll have factual proofs that genocide was committed in Sumgait against the Armenian population", Ruben Sahakyan emphasized.

The Sumgait massacre in February 1988 that claimed lives of 32 Armenians was the first mass explosion of ethnic violence in the modern Soviet history that resulted in huge refugee flows to Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. No timely fact-finding , identification and punishment of perpetrators were initiated.