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Armenia’s former Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) Arman Tatoyan and his team are collecting evidence of Azerbaijani atrocities against Armenian soldiers during the latest aggression, including videos and photos, he said in a statement on Friday. The full text of his statement is below.

“We are collecting and verifying evidence of Azerbaijani war crimes regarding the torture and murder of Armenian servicemen, including videos and photos. Translation from Azerbaijani into Armenian, Russian and English, recording and analysis is being carried out.

Research proves that the Azerbaijani soldiers act on the same principle as in April war of 2016 and 44-day-war of 2020. They act with extreme cruelty, cynically, and with confidence that not only will they not be punished, but they will be praised by their leaders.

For example, in one video, a female Armenian soldier was stripped naked, tortured and mutilated.

Then Azerbaijani soldiers marked the name of the Azerbaijani special forces – YAŞMA or YASHMA – on the tortured body of the same Armenian woman, indicating that the crime had been committed by them.

In the same video, they mention in Azerbaijani that they killed 2 more female Armenian soldiers and show the mutilated body of one of them in the nude. The details of both this and other cases are not presented in this publication, they will be presented to the relevant international institutions.

These brutalities were filmed and purposely posted on Azerbaijani social media channels so that these videos would spread in the Armenian domain in order to terrorize people.

The purpose of verifying evidence of the Azerbaijani war crimes is to provide real grounds for the criminal prosecution and punishment of the Azerbaijani authorities.

Evidence of the damage caused to the civilian population is also being collected.

It is absolutely clear that these atrocities are not separate crimes from each other, but the consequences of the unified state policy of hatred of the Azerbaijani authorities. Those are the links of a single chain. The torturers even use the same expressions as the Azerbaijani officials. Not only has this policy not stopped, but it has deepened, reaching outright fascism. And all of this is encouraged by absolute impunity for these vicious crimes.

In this situation, we should not allow ourselves to be numbed by false peace building.

It simply serves the Azerbaijani interests and assists them in concealing their own insidious intentions under the veil of peace.”