KHANKENDI, Azerbaijan, May 1. The fate of nearly 4,000 Azerbaijani citizens is still unknown, Hikmet Hajiyev, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan and Head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration, told reporters during the visit of representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in Azerbaijan to Khankendi, Trend reports.
"We can never forget the memories of the past, the bitter memories, the bloody memories. One of the bitter experiences and consequences of the occupation period is the issue of missing persons. To this day, there is still no information about the fate of about 4,000 of our citizens. Most of them are civilians, who were captured and held hostage during the military aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan during the occupation, and there is no information about their further fate," he explained.
He noted that for 30 years, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has created special opportunities for its activities in the territory of Azerbaijan, as well as in the liberated territories, and whose mandate is based on humanitarian issues, has collected a lot of information on this.
"However, it hasn't completed its work to the end, the mandate entrusted to them hasn't been fully fulfilled. Thus, we have not been able to receive any information about the fate of up to 4,000 of our people and the actions committed against them. Therefore, this issue remains open to this day, and we have also appealed to the Armenian side through various channels.
"Even when representatives of Armenian civil society were here last time, we appealed to them to provide information to the Azerbaijani side based on the testimonies of witnesses of various cases and their information because families are still waiting for information about their children, mothers about their sons and daughters, but we haven't been able to provide this information yet," the official said.
Hajiyev emphasized that as a result of the conditions created by President Ilham Aliyev and the searches conducted by the relevant state commission in accordance with his instructions, the remains of a number of our citizens were found, and as a result of their DNA analysis and a very complex analysis process, their identities were determined and their families were informed.
"But we still have a big job ahead of us. According to international humanitarian law, this work was to be carried out by the ICRC, as the mandate holder, within 30 years, but it hasn't been carried out by the committee. At the very least, we didn't consider the work it did satisfactory, and both our people and citizens had legitimate expectations in this regard," he added.
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