Governor: 33 PoWs from Shirak still in Azerbaijani captivity

PanARMENIAN.Net - The newly appointed governor of Armenia's Shirak province Nazeli Baghdasaryan has said that 33 prisoners of war from the province captured by Azerbaijan during the Second Karabakh War are still in captivity. According to her, 29 people have so far been repatriated to the province.

Baghdasaryan added that the repatriation process is quite intensive, but any "noise and declaration damages the process", Aysor.am reports.

"On my first working day I met with the relatives of the captives," the governor said.

Azerbaijan is refusing to return all Armenian prisoners of war, in violation of the statement on the cessation of hostilities signed by the parties in November 2020. The Armenian side has information about some 200 Armenians still in Azerbaijan’s captivity, but Azeri President Ilham Aliyev claims that persons being kept in Baku are not PoWs, but “terrorists and saboteurs”. At least 19 of the hundreds of Armenian captives have been tortured and killed, according to their lawyers.