Упрощенная HTML-версия
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www.justiceforkhojaly.org
Apart from denying responsibility for its oc-
cupation and military presence in the territories
of Azerbaijan, official Yerevan does all it can to
represent the massacre in Khojaly as an action by
Azerbaijanis who allegedly obstructed the evac-
uation of the civilian population from the area
and, even worse, gunned down their compatriots,
in order to exploit large numbers of civilian casu-
alties for their own internal political ends.
However, there are more than sufficient evi-
dence, reports from numerous sources, including
eyewitnesses, governments, intergovernmental
and non-governmental organizations and mass
media, that testify to Armenia’s responsibility,
including that of its political and military lead-
erships and subordinate separatist armed groups,
for the crimes committed in Khojaly.
In its judgment of 22 April 2010, the Euro-
pean Court of Human Rights noted in particular
the following:
“It appears that the reports available from
independent sources indicate that at the time
of the capture of Khojaly on the night of 25
to 26 February 1992 hundreds of civilians
of Azerbaijani ethnic origin were reported-
ly killed, wounded or taken hostage, during
their attempt to flee the captured town, by
Armenian fighters attacking the town”.
According to Armenian author Markar Mel-
konian, who dedicated a book to his brother, the
well-known international terrorist Monte Mel-
konian (Markar Melkonian, My Brother’s Road:
An American’s Fateful Journey to Armenia
(London and New York, 2005), pp. 213-214),
the town “had been a strategic goal, but it had
also been an act of revenge”. The author par-
ticularly mentions the role of the fighters of the
two Armenian military detachments “Arabo”
and “Aramo” and describes in detail how they
butchered the peaceful inhabitants of Khojaly.
Thus, as he puts it, some inhabitants of the town
had almost made it to safety, after fleeing for
nearly six miles, when “[Armenian] soldiers had
chased them down”. The soldiers, in his words,
“unsheathed the knives they had carried on their
hips for so long, and began stabbing”.
The Khojaly events took place in a period
when Serzh Sargsyan, the incumbent president
of the Republic of Armenia served as the head
of the illegal separatist regime’s “Self-Defence
Forces Committee” and, accordingly, his rec-
ollections constitute one of the most important
sources of evidence. The following words by
Mr. Sargsyan leave no doubt as to the perpe-
trator of the crime in Khojaly: “Before Khojali,
the Azerbaijanis thought that they were joking
with us, they thought that the Armenians were
PERPETRATORS OF THE CRIME