Human Rights Defender of Armenia Arman Tatoyan has issued a statement over the imprisonments of Armenian captives in Azerbaijan, stating that those convictions are totally groundless and are an artificial result of an artificial process.

“Each “trial” organized by the Azerbaijani authorities is accompanied by reports in Azerbaijani media violating human dignity and rights, with titles such as “Armenian terrorists” or similar ones. It’s obvious that this is done deliberately and has an organized nature. In their turn Azerbaijani social networks are being filled with “discussions” of hatred, calls for torturing and killing the captives”, the Ombudsman said, adding that the monitoring shows that in reality political bargaining and trade of people are taking place, citing the video of the conversation of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Turkey’s First Lady Emine Erdogan as an example of this.

“The continuous appeals and alarms of families of captives and missing persons to the Ombudsman prove that these trials cause additional psychological sufferings, make people’s feelings more painful.

Each, the so-called trial is fake from the very start, with a gross violation of international law, and holding the captives is a banned punishment. This situation grossly violates the international human rights demands, including the 1949 Third Geneva Convention.

All existing facts and the behavior of Azerbaijani authorities is an open ignorance to the whole international community, distorts the system of international humanitarian law which has been developed for decades.

All captives must be immediately released and repatriated without any preconditions”, the Ombudsman said.