ICRC officials could not meet Armenian POW in Baku

Employees of the Baku office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have not yet met Arsen Bagdasaryan, an Armenian soldier, detained by the Azerbaijani party on the contact line.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on December 27, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of Azerbaijan announced taking an Armenian soldier as a prisoner of war (POW). The Ministry stressed that the soldier Arsen Bagdasaryan was detained at an attempt of a sabotage group to penetrate into the territory of Azerbaijan. On the same day, the MoD of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) denied the sabotage statement, noting that earlier Bagdasaryan had been a contract serviceman, but was removed from service in the armed forces.

On January 14, Zara Amatuni, the Communications Programme Manager at the Yerevan office of the ICRC, said that since detention the Azerbaijani party does not allow ICRC staff to meet Bagdasaryan. According to her story, "the talks about visiting this person continue."

Elchin Bekhbudov, the head of the Azerbaijani Committee against Torture (CaT), who visited Bagdasaryan on January 12, said that the young man did not complain about his detention conditions and did not want to be returned to Armenia, asking to send him to some third country.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.