Russia raises return of captured Armenian women from Azerbaijan

PanARMENIAN.Net - Russia's Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matvienko has asked the speaker of the Azerbaijani parliament to help repatriate two Armenian women being kept in Baku.

According to Russian media reports, Matvienko has specifically mentioned the women who were captured in Nagorno-Karabakh after military hostilities in late 2020.

In a phone call with her Azerbaijani counterpart Sahiba Gafarova, Matvienko said parliamentarians are capable of helping solve humanitarian problems in the zone of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Several dozen Armenian POWs returned from Azerbaijan in mid-December, although Armenian officials said many more people were being held in Baku. Dozens of others, both servicemen and civilians, have been captured after the completion of military hostilities. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has said in one of his speeches that the newly detained persons are not prisoners of war but “terrorists”. Human rights lawyer Siranush Sahakyan has said, meanwhile, that at least 120 Armenian prisoners of war are being held in Azerbaijan. Sahakyan represents the rights of some of the Karabakh POWs before the European Court of Human Rights. The lawyer said there is enough evidence proving the capture of said persons, which the Armenian side will submit to international agencies and courts.