Armenia, Azerbaijan swap prisoners

PanARMENIAN.Net - The International Committee of the Red Cross has facilitated the exchange of prisoners between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The countries each released one prisoner of the other country on the border near the Armenian town of Ijevan, Tavush province.

The Azerbaijani citizen named Elvin Arif Oglu Ibrahimov was arrested on March 16, 2019, while the Armenian citizen, Zaven Karapetyan, was captured on June 20, 2017.

According to Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anna Naghdalyan, the process is not the realization of the principle of returning all the prisoners to their respective countries, proposed by Azerbaijan.

“We are not dealing with a prisoner swap here as Yerevan had declared earlier that Armenia is returning Ibrahimov to Azerbaijan based on humanitarian considerations,” Naghdalyan said.

“This process was carried out through close cooperation with the ICRC, in particular, the organization’s office in Armenia.”

Ibrahim had not committed a grave crime, so the individual approach based on the humanitarian principle is applicable.

“We also took note of Azerbaijan’s decision to release Karapetyan, who found himself in the territory of Azerbaijan under unknown circumstances, and organized his repatriation together with ICRC,” the spokeswoman said.