The "International and Comparative Law" Center and the Human Rights Defender of Armenia published an special public report: "Azerbaijan's responsibility for torture and inhumane treatment of Armenian prisoners during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war". The report was published with the support of the Washington-based Armenian Legal Center for Justice and Human Rights.
Armenian human rights defenders carried out fact-finding activities regarding gross human rights and humanitarian violations by Azerbaijan against Armenian prisoners of war (POWs). The purpose of the report is to provide a complete picture of violations of international humanitarian law against the citizens of Armenia committed by the government of Azerbaijan and its military forces.
During a press conference regarding the publication of the report, RA Human Rights Defender Arman Tatoyan stated that the torture and inhumane treatment and humiliation were widespread, based not only on ethnicity (being Armenian, mocking ethnicity), but also on gross violations of religious rights. There was almost no water and no food. There were cases when food was thrown on the ground, and they were forced to eat from the ground.
According to human rights lawyer Siranush Sahakyan, head of the International and Comparative Law Center, three institutions were actively involved in torture: military police under the Ministry of Defense, the investigative detention center under the National Security Service, and the detention centers under the Ministry of Justice.
"The Armenian POWs were deprived of hygienic means. During the visits of the Red Cross or the Russian military, the inhumane treatment of the POWs was concealed. They used brutality when they tried to forcefully extract the information they wanted, forcing them to sign documents in Azerbaijani - the human rights lawyer noted, adding - the lack of official confirmations allows us to talk about the process of forced disappearance. The goal is to keep captives out of legal protection. Other evidence also speaks to hiding the numbers."
Human rights lawyer Artak Zeynalyan also mentioned that this uncertainty is enough to say that no one was spared from inhumane treatment. "In the modern world, a soldier is not a murderer, a soldier does not kill, but disables the equipment. What has happened is, we are dealing with murderers."
The full report: "Azerbaijan's responsibility for torture and inhumane treatment of Armenian prisoners, 2020 during the Nagorno-Karabakh war".