YEREVAN (Noyan Tapan)–Numerous facts testify to the fact that Azerbaijan officially maintained contacts with Afghan mujahedins and thousands mercenary mujahedins and Chechen gunmen participated in the Karabakh fighting with Azeri detachmen’s–according to a statement issued by the National Security ministry Tuesday.
According to verified information–also corroborated by the documentary materials–special contingents were formed by the Afghan mujahedin and Chechen gunmen during the military operations in Karabakh to perform punitive and terrorist operations. They were manned in educational centers stationed in the armed forces of the region of Doliburun Zhdanovski–nearby the Seifuli Shamkhor region–in the town of Ali-Bairamli–and in the territory of the Yevlakh region of Azerbaijan. A special bureau was created in hotel Apsheron in Baku to recruit mercenaries and house them before being dispatched to military units. Dozens of officers and interpreters were trained.
According to the documen’s–every mercenary received $700 to $1,000 a month–depending on the degree of their participation in the military operations. They instantly met the deman’s of the special contingent and provided them with additional food–transportation for personal use–and many other perks. Testifying to the existence of the special contingent are the copies of the orders–photographs–letters–copy-books as well as the records of conversations between Aliyev and Head of the General Headquarters Sadikhov.
According to the statement–the Azeri special services periodically committed acts of terrorism on the Armenian-Karabakh border as well as in the Marneul region of Georgia on the roads going to Armenia. In the period from 1993 to 1994 only–13 explosions were registered on the gas pipe line road–in 1994-96 terrorist attacks were made in the Bagratashen borderline market of the Noyamberian region. The explosions in the market caused the death of dozens of people–and many others were seriously injured. The statement also illustrates the cruel and inhumane treatment with the Armenian POW’s and hostages in prisons and concentration camps. The suicide committed by former POW Tiko Tikoyan who was held captive by Azeris from May 30 to July 28 of 2000 testifies to this fact.
The Ministry concluded that the propaganda campaign by Azerbaijan launched to portray Armenia as a terrorist country and Nagorno Karabakh as a country harboring terrorists–drug traffickers and other criminal elemen’s obviously aims at veiling its own terrorist activities. Fabrication of evidence–falsification of facts–distortion of reports of the US Department of State on global terrorism and struggle against drug trafficking–references to non-existing statemen’s of the ICRC and leaders of the PACE are applied to this end.