THE FACTS CONCERNING THE GROSS VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGH THE PART OF THE
AZERBAIJANI REPUBLIC OCCUPIED BY THE ARMED FORCES OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA
Arbitrary and extrajudicial executions and mass shootings
Khojaly
One of the most heinous crimes against the Azerbaijyni people was the brutal
annihilation of hundreds of blameless inhabitants of the town of Khojaly, in the
Nagorny Karabakh region of the Azerbaijani Republic, which was taken by Armenian
troops on the night of 25/26 February 1992. The Armenian armed forces and
mercenary units spared virtually none of those who had been unable to flee Khojaly
and the surrounding area. In the words of the journalist Chingiz Mustafaev, among
the dead were "... dozens upon dozens of children between 2 and 15 years old, women
and old people, in most cases shot at point- blank range in the head. The position
of the bodies indicated that the people had been killed in cold blood,
calculatedly, without any sign of a struggle or of having tried to escape. Some had
been taken aside and shot singly; many had been killed as whole families at once.
Some corpses displayed several wounds, one of which was invariably in the head,
suggesting that the wounded had been finished off. Some children were found with
severed ears; the skin had been cut from the left side of an elderly woman's face;
and men had been scalped. There were corpses that had clearly been robbed. The
first time we arr'ved at the scene o f the shootings of 28 February, accompanied by
two military helicopters, we saw from the air an open area about one kilometre
across which was strewn with corpses almost everywhere ..." (Khojaly - The Last
Day, Bake, Azerhaijan publishing house, 1992)
An inhabitant of Khojaly, Djanan Orudjev, also provided information on the many
victims, chiefly women and children. His 16-year-old son was shot , and his
23-year-old daughter with her twin children and another, 18-year-old daughter who
was pregnant, were taken hostage. Saria Talybova, who witnessed the bloody tragedy
as it unfolded, watched as four Meskhetian Turks, refugees from Central Asia, an d
three Azerbaijanis were beheaded on the grave of an Armenian soldier, and children
were tortured and killed before their parents' eyes; two Azerbaijanis in national
army uniform had their eyes put out with screwdrivers. The organized nature of the
ext ermination of the people of Khojaly was further evident from the fact that the
peaceful inhabitants who fled the town in desperation to save their lives were
killed outside it in previously prepared ambushes. For example, Elman Mamedov,
chief of administ ration in Khojaly, reported that a large group of people who had
left Khojaly came under heavy fire from Armenian light and heavy machine-guns and
armoured personnel carriers near the village of Nakhichevanik. Another resident of
Khojaly, Sanubar Alekpero va, said she would never forget the mountains of corpses
of women, children and old people near Nakhichevanik, where they fell into an
ambush: in the carnage, her mother and her two daughters, Sevinzh and Khidzhran,
were killed and she herself was wounded . Faced with this mass shooting-down of
unarmed people, some of the group made for the village of Gyulably, but there the
Armenians took some 200 people hostage. Among them was Dzhamil Mamedov; the
Armenians tore out his nails, beat him about the legs and head and took away his
grandson, and his wife and daughter vanished without trace. (Khojaly - The Last
Day, op. cit.)
The majority of the dead were children, women and elderly people. They included 5
infants and 18 children of various ages. Seven-year-old Zokhra Nabieva was b urnt
alive. Three-year-old Rakhman Mamedov was not given the doctor's attention he
needed, and subsequently died. Seven children froze to death, two died after savage
beatings, two were shot. Elman Aliev, three years old, suffered a hear" att.ack.
Six we re unable to withstand brutal torture and died; three were run over.
"I had heard a lot about wars, about the cruelty of the Fascists, but the Armenians
were worse, killing five- and six-year-old children, killing innocent civilians",
said a French j ournalist, Jean-Yves Junet, who visited the scene of this mass
murder of women, old people, children and defenders of Khojaly. (Khojaly - The
Last Day, op. cit.)
One of the French journalist's Russian colleagues, V. Belykh, a
correspondent for the newspaper Izvestia, reported seeing bodies with their eyes
gouged out or ears cut off and bodies that had been scalpe.d or beheaded. (Khojaly
- The Last Day, op. cit.)
The head of the Armenian Defence Ministry's medical service, Khandar Gadzhiev - a
man not unfamiliar, by reason of his job, with the spectacle of death and suffering
- was horrified by the ev idence of savage reprisals against the inhabitants of
Khojaly brought before him: a guardsman with his intestines hanging out, people
with frostbite, a child whose leg had been tom off by heavy machine-gun fire, a
girl whose face had been slashed with a k nife. Major Leonid Kravets reported that
he had "personally seen about 200 bodies" and that with him had been a local
policeman who, "when he saw his four-year-old son lying among the dead with his
head split open, went out of his mind with grief". (Khojaly - The Last Day, op.
cit.)
The report of Memorial, the Moscow-based human riahts group, on the massive
violations of human rights committed in the taking of Khojaly says of the civili
ans' flight from the town:"The fuaitives fell into ambushes set by the Armenians
and came under fire. Some of them nonetheless managed to get into Agdam; others,
mostly women and child en (exactly how many it is impossible to), froze to death
while lo st in the mour.t.ains; others still, according to testimony from those who
reached Agdam, were taken prisoner near the villages of Pirdzharnal and
Nakhichevanik. 'There is evidence from inhabitants of Khojaly who 'nave already
been exchanged that some of the prisoners were shot ... Around 200 bodies were
brought into Agdam in the space of four days. Scores of the corpses bore traces of
profanation. Doctors on a hospital train in Agdam noted no less than four corpses
that had been scalped and one that had been beheaded. State forensic examinations
were carried out in Agdam on 181 corpses (130 male and 51 female, including 13
children): the findings were that 151 people had died from gunshot wounds, 20 from
shrapnel wounds and 10 from blows inflicted with a blunt instrument ... The records
of the hospital train in Agdam, through which almost all the injured inhabitants or
defenders of Khojaly passed, refer to 598 cases of wounds or frostbite (cases of
frostbite being in the majority) and one case of l ive scalping". ("A tragedy
whose perpetrators cannot be vindicated. A report by Memorial, the Moscow-based
human rights group, on the massive violations of human rights committed in the
taking of Khojaly on the night of 25/26 February 1992 by armed unit s", newspaper
Svoboda, 12 June 1992.)
***
SPECIFIC VIOLATIONS OF THE LAWS OF Armed Conflict VIOLENCE TO CIVILIANS,
SUMMARY EXECUTIONS' DESTRUCTION OF CIVILIAN PROPERTY, PILLAGE FORCED EVACUATION Of
CIVILIAN POPULATION
By the winter of 1991-1992 a pattern of attacks on villages and abuses of
civilians emerged. These abuses flagrantly violate customary law rules codified in
Article 3 Common to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the Second Ad ditional Protocol of
1977', and United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2444. Armenian forces
captured villages populated by Azerbaijanis, allegedly seeking to end missile
attacks on Armenian locations. In the pr ocess, they killed unarmed civilians who
either remained in the village or who were attempting to flee, looted and sometimes
burned their homes, and essentially prevented them from returning to their
villages.
Khojaly
On the night of February 25-26 Armenian forces seized the Azerbaijani town of
Khojaly, located about four miles from Hankandi (Stepanakert). As some of its
residents, accompanied by retreating Azerbaijani militia and self-defense forces,
fled Khojaly seeking to cross the border to reach Agdam, they approached Armenian
military posts and were fired upon. The Azerbaijani government is currently
conducting two investigations of the events, one carried out by a special
parliamentary commission and another by the Procuracy. In addition, the Human
Rights Center of Memorial, a prominent Russian nongovernmental organization,
conducted an independent investigation of the incident in March 1992.
According to Azerbaijani Procuracy officials, before the escalation of the conflict
in Nagorno Karabakh, Khojaly had a population of about 6,000; its precise
population in February is unknown since some residents may have fled earlier. In
1988 Khojaly had only 2,000 residents and had the status of a village; its numbers
grew as Azerbaijani refugees from Armenia were resettled there. The Azerbaijani
government had also settled in Khojaly several hundred Meskhetian Turks fleeing
persecution in Central Asia. Finally, Azerbaijanis flocked there from other parts
of Nagorno Karabakh, notably from Stepanakert, and continued to do so after the
Armenian forces overran their villages in the winter of 1991-92. It received the
status of town from the Azerbaijani government only in December 1991, and, after
Shusha, was the second most populous Azerbaijani town in Nagorno Karabakh.
The only airport in Nagorno Karabakh is located in Khojaly. Since at least
1990, an Azerbaijani OMON militia unit was deployed in Khojaly, mainly with the
purpose of defending the town and the airport. The exact numb er of militia
deployed is unknown. Aiden Rasulov, who leads the Azerbaijani Procuracy's
investigation of Khojaly, puts the number at twenty-two, although displaced persons
said that as many as forty militia men fled with the town's population. In
addition, Khojaly had a self-defense group of about 200.
Armenian fighters maintain that they sent an ultimatum to the Azerbaijani forces in
Khojaly warning that unless missile attacks from that town on Stepanakert ceased,
Armenian forces would attack. According to A.H., an Azerbaijani woman interviewed
by Helsinki Watch in Baku, After Armenians seized Malybeyli, they made an ultimatum
to Khojaly... and that Khojaly people had better leave with a white flag. Alif
Gajiev [the head of the militia in Khojaly] told us this on February 15, but this
didn't frighten me or other people. We never believed they could occupy Khojaly.
According to nearly all of the twenty-two Azerbaijani witnesses of the
Khojaly events interviewed by Helsinki Watch, the village had been shelled almost
on a daily basis during the winter of 1991-92, and people had grown accustom ed to
spending nights in basements.
The attack on Khojaly began about 11:00 P.M. on February 25, with heavy
shelling and artillery fire. Hassan Alahierov, a construction worker, told Helsinki
Watch, we were used to [hearing] shooting, but usually with machine guns. I was
sleeping on the balcony and my son came to me and said that this was a different
noise. I stood up and... saw BMPs [armed personnel carriers] and tanks were
shooting from all directions.... When I went out I saw bombs f alling everywhere.
Several refugees reported that they saw houses burning during the attack on Khojaly
or while they were fleeing the village. Juleka Dunemalieva (whose sister died of
exposure during their flight from Khojaly) said that at about midnight or 1:00
A.M. she saw the neighborhood where Meskhetian Turks lived
go up in flames: "Meskhetians lived in our neighborhood in fhinnish-style
cottages. When their houses were burned we got out right away." Most Khojaly
residents remained in the town un til about 3:00 A.M., some staying in basements in
private homes. In addition, about 300 residents reportedly took shelter in the
basement of one school. Some reported that they decided to leave at 3:00 A.M.
because the self- defe nse forces were running through the streets shouting
instructions to people to run away. Residents fled the town in sep arate groups,
amid chaos and panic, most of them without any belongings or clothes for the cold
weather. As a result, hundreds of people suffered - and some died - from severe
frostbite. The majority of Khojaly residents w ent along a route that took them
across a shallow river, through the mountains, and, by about dawn, towards an open
field near the village of Nakhichevanik, controlled then by Armenians. It was here
that the most intense sh ooting took place. Other people fled along different
routes that took them directly by Shelli, an Azerbaijani village near Agdam. A
number of Khojaly survivors wandered through the forest for several days before
finding their way to Agdam 's environs.
Positioning of the Militia
Among one of these fleeing groups was the Azerbaijani OMON, led by Alif
Gajiev, on retreat from the airport. Gajiev had, according to several Helsinki
Watch interviewees, directed the group seeking shelter in the school bas ement to
leave the village. At Nakhichevanik Armenians and troops of the CIS 366th regiment
opened fire on the retreating OMON militia and the fleeing residents. All
Azerbaijanis interviewed who were in this group reported that the militia, still in
uniform, and some still carrying their guns, were interspersed with the masses of
civilians. For example, Hijran Alekpera, a twenty-three-year-old former bakery
worker, described a mass of civilians who moved along surrounded by a ring of
defenders. They tried to defend us. They had guns and they would try to shoot
back."
According to a twenty-one-year-old Azerbaijani woman whose toes had to be
amputated because of frostbite damage, The leaders of our group were men. The
Armenians opened fire as we approached the village [of Nakhichevanik]. They
surrounded us and shot. There was shooting between Armenian soldiers and ours.
SA., a member of the OMON unit, told Helsinki Watch, "We were shooting and running
in the pack, but it was not an organized retreat. We were all mixed together."
Another young Azerbaijani woman, who suffered frostbite on her legs, also
described the crossfire: "When Armenians saw us they began to shoot. We hid. At
the same time Azerbaijanis shot back. They were Azerbaijani OMON. Some of the m
were with us when we fled.
Firing on Civilians
Witnesses to and victims of the shooting at Nakhichevanik told Helsinki
Watch of varying numbers of people who fell under fire, and described how they
received their gunshot wounds.
Thirty-three-year-old Nigar Azizova, who worked in a vegetable store, told
Helsinki Watch that when the crowd started falling over bodies, they turned back
and fled in diferent directions.
The crowd was about sixty meters long. I was in the middle, and people in
the front were mostly killed. At Nakhichevanik we saw that people in front were
falling. They shouted and fell. I recognized their faces. I could see their faces
as we stepped over them. We covered the children's eyes so they wouldn't see.
Mrs.Azizova listed eight people whose bodies she had to step over, and claimed that
they had no guns: Elshan Abushov, Hassan Abushov, Zelif Alekhpeliev , Tevagul
Alekhpelieva, Sakhvet Alekhpeliev (who reportedly was nine years old), Elmar
Abdulev, Etibar Aushov, and Habib Abushov.
A young Azerbaijani woman who was eventually taken hostage told Helsinki Watch, "It
was a cultivated field. We approached it and saw that they began to shoot. I must
have seen sixty people dead in th e field. Those who were running away with me fell
and died."
Hassan Alahierov said: "First we ran to Nakhichevanik, but when they began
shooting people we ran to the other side. There was a BMP standing on the road - I
didn't see it, I just saw the shells. " Alahierov's eighteen-year-old daughte r,
who got separated from her father, said she saw the tank: "When the tank began to
shoot we ran in all directions. I saw corpses scattered, and saw all the people
surrounding them fall."
Hijran Alekpera reported that:
By the time we got to Nakhichevanik it was 9:00 A.M. There was a field and
there were many people who had been killed. There were maybe one hundred. I
didn't try to count. I was wounded on th[is] field. Gajiv Aliev was shot and I
wanted to help him. A bullet hit me in the belly. I could see where they were
shooting from. I saw other bodies in the field. They were newly killed - they
hadn't changed color.
Fifty-one-year-old Balaoglan Allakhiarov said:
We got to Nakhichevanik at 8:00 A.M., and were in the middle of the field
when they began to fire. They were shooting only from one direction - the forest.
Then we ran off the field toward a canyon, where my wife and daughter-in -law were
shot. They were shot from about twenty meters. My daughter-in-law was struck
three times - through the skull, in her stomach and in her leg. My wife was hit
from behind. [The Armenians] took off their rings.
At about 8:00 A.M. Nazile Khetemova received a gunshot wound in her left leg:
We were all crawling. Whoever stood up got wounded. I stood up to rest my
legs and was wounded. I saw many people get shot, and we had to leave them as we
crawled along. After I was wounded I didn't see many people pass me; they hid in
the forest.
I stayed in the snow until 7:00 P.M. Members of the Popular Front came and helped
me escape.
Beginning February 27, Azerbaijani helicopters brought in personnel who
attempted to collect bodies and assist the wounded. Some of the rescue team were
wearing camouflage clothing, and they were constantly shot at by
Armenian forces. Members of the first rescue group, who were accompanied by a
French journalist, reported that some of the corpses had been scalped or otherwise
mutilated. One member of the group videotaped the mission.
Death Toll
There are still no definitive figures on the number of civilians who were
shot while fleeing Khojaly. According to Aiden Rasulov, more than 300 bodies
showing evidence of a violent death were submitted for forensic exam ination. At
the time of Helsinki Watch's visit to Baky, the results of these examinations had
not been completed, and the investigative team was in the process of tracking down
the corpses of Khojaly victims that had been removed from Agdam by family members
in the first days after the tragedy. Earlier figures made available by Azerbaijan
and published by the Memorial group put the number of deaths resulting from
gunshot, shrapnel, or other wounds at 181, (130 men and fifty-one women, including
thirteen children).
In addition, an undetermined number died of frostbite. Namig Aliev, who heads the
Department on Questions of Law and Order and Defense of the Azerbaijani Parliament
and who is part of the parliamentary group investigating the Khojaly events, told
Helsinki Watch in April that 213 Khojaly victims were buried in Agdam. Some of the
bodies rec eived at the makeshift hospital in Agdam were identified as combatants.
Many male bodies that lacked all identification were not identified as civilian or
combatant
Aliev also reported that of those bodies submitted for forensic
examination, thirty-three had been scalped, had body parts removed, or had been
otherwise mutilated.
One hundred eighty individuals from Khojaly are reported to be missing.
As noted in Appendix V to this report, the civilian population and
individual civilians are not legitimate objects of attack in any armed conflict.
The contending parties accordingly must distinguish at all times between c ivilians
and combatants and direct their attacks only against the latter. Moreover, the
parties may not use civilians to shield military targets from attack or to shield
military operations, including retreats. Thus, a party that intersperses
combatants with fleeing civilians puts those civilians at risk and violates its
obligation to protect its own civilians.
Although retreating combatants and civilians who assume a combatant's role
while fleeing are subject to direct individualized attack, the attacking party is
still obliged to take precautionary measures to avoid or minimize civilian
casualties. In particular, the party must suspend an attack if it becomes apparent
that the attack may be expected to cause civilian casualties that are excessive in
relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. The
circumstances surrounding the attack at Nakhichevanik on those fleeing Khojaly
indicate that Armenian forces and the t roops of the 366 th CIS regiment (who were
not apparently acting on orders from their commanders) deliberately disregarded
this customary law restraint on attacks. Nagorno Karabakh officials and fighters
clearly expected the inhabitants of Khojaly to flee since they claim to have
informed the town that a corridor would be left open to allow for their safe
passage. No witnesses interviewed by Helsinki Watch, however, said that they kne w
beforehand of such a corridor. In addition, although witnesses and victims gave
varying testimony on the precise time the shooting began at Nakhichevanik, they all
indicated that there was sufficient light to allow for reason able visibility and,
thus, for the attackers to distinguish unarmed civilians from those persons who
were armed and/or using weapons. Further, despite conflicting testimony about the
direction from which the fire was coming, th e evidence suggests that the attackers
indiscriminately directed their fire at all fleeing persons. Under these
circumstances, the killing of fleeing combatants could not justify the foreseeably
large number of civilian casualties.
Malybeyli and Gushchulur
This pair of Azerbaijani villages is separated by a low hill and shared the
same village administration. They are located a few kilometers from Stepanakert,
and, together, had a population of between 2,000 and 4,000. Malybe yli and
Gushchular had a joint self-defense unit of about eighty. According to a member of
Gushchular's self-defense forces, seventeen militia men served there, and a small
unit of the National Army was deployed in G ushchular in January for about twenty
days. Azerbaijani forces reportedly shelled Armenian villages from this area.
By October or November 1991 residents of Malybeyli and Gushchular were
basically confined to their villages, as travel elsewhere could be done only be
helicopter.
The majority of women and children were evacuated on December 12, according
to a Helsinki Watch interview with a member of Gushchular's self-defense forces,
but many still remained. According to witnesses' accounts, Armenian forces began
heavy shooting and shelling of these two villages in December 1991. A report in
the newspaper Express Chronick asserted that on February 5 a helicopter distributed
leaflets warning villagers that they had two days to leave before "the settlement
would cease to exist," but no interviewees confirmed this report. Armenian forces
attacked these villages with heavy artillery and armed personnel carri ers on the
night of February 9-10, with the alleged aim of ending the shelling of Armenian
villages. Malybeyli was attacked first, and most of its villagers reportedly fled
to neighboring Gushchular. The entire attack lasted two days. Residents of
Malybeyli and Gushchular reported that as they fled they saw, from atop a hill a
kilometer away, houses in flames. They cannot return to their villages, which are
now in Armenian hands. Eight people were reportedly killed as a result of the
seizure of Malybeyli, some of whom were women and children.
Residents of Gushchular fled to Agdam about 9:00 A.M. on February 1 l. An
Azerbaijani who worked as a tractor mechanic on the local collective farm told
Helsinki Watch, at 7:00 A.M. Armenians surrounded the village from all sides an d
shot everywhere. At 8:00 A.M. [our] soldiers told us we had to leave the village.
Some of us were killed on the road while fleeing. According to the reports of
several eyewitnesses, the militia and self-defense forces, which still had their
guns, were mixed with civilians as they were fleeing. According to
twenty-seven-year-old Gulbenes Zenalova, a woman from Gushchular:
On February 11, shooting started, and we could see that Malybeyli was
burning. We fled to Agdam on the Abu Gulabli road, the only way out. While we
fled they attacked us at Garov, Piramali, and Deheraz villages, wh ere the
Armenians had posts. Everyone left together, at 9 or so. The militia defended us
while we were retreating. My niece was injured on her head. I saw blood on her
head. She's five years old. Bullets were flying i n all directions. We would
hurry along, and when they would shoot we would hide behind the trees. I saw three
people fall from being shot. They weren't armed: Ali Allakhverdov, fifty-five to
sixty years old, with seven sons and a daughter; Akhmedov Kunduz, eighteen years
old; and a nineteen-year-old boy called ElShan. Rafael Guliev, who described
himself as Malybeyli's representative, alleged that the self-defense forces and
Armenian fighters exchanged fire. Guliev told Helsinki Watch: We met Armenian
fighters in the forest around noon. We shouted at them to let the women and kids go
and we men will stay here. The Armenians said "give us your weapons and we will let
the women and kids through." There were soldiers in our village, Russians and
Ukrainians who fled their divisions in Stepanakert.
Three of them holding white handkerchiefs approached the Armenians but they
opened fire. Then they shot at us, and the self-defense groups... returned the
fire. We had to take the women out through the forest to Abu Gulabli village.
During the eight hours on the way sometimes we had to fight. The men were
fighting and people fled as best they could.
I don't know what's happened to my house, but I saw [houses] in the village
burning There was a mountain on the way when we left, in the village of Garokh.
They were Finnish houses, and they had a stone foundation and the rest was mad e of
pine. [One of them belonged to] a man named Wagif, who is an electrician.
Masahir Bairanov, who said he moved to Malybeyli in 1989 because "Armenians
were pressuring us" in his home village of Hasanabad, also was an eyewitness to
the exchange between Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Russian sold iers described above
by Mr. Guliev. A member of the self-defense forces, Bairanov told Helsinki Watch
that:
We told the [Russian soldiers], you're Russians - perhaps they won't kill you. The
Russians just went. They didn't object. When Russians went up to them with white
flags they had no arms. I had my hunting gun. All three of them were killed.
A thirty-six-year-old member of the self-defense forces of that village who
was wounded during the retreat from Gushchular told Helsinki Watch that during the
retreat "I saw my house on fire. From the mountain ridge I saw how the villa ge was
burning.... I saw from spy glasses how they entered the houses, and when they went
out, the houses burned."
Among the eight civilians reported killed in the seizure of Malybeyli and
Gushchular was Nubar Zenalova. Her son, a sixty-four-year-old retired collective
farm worker stayed in his house with Zenalova, who was alleged to be 110 years old.
Mr. Zenalov told Helsinki Watch:
We lived well, and had a good house.... On February 11 Armenians started attacking
the village.... I didn't flee because my mother is very old and she couldn't leave.
I was at home when they [the Armenians] came into my house and put a gun to my
head. They killed my mother, Nubar Zenalova. There were three other women in my
house, and they were taken hostage... They took [at least three] people from the
village, and all were my relatives. One was eighty-four, Unis Guliev - he's in the
hospital; Kerim Kerimov, who is sixty-six years old (he's also in the hospital);
and Gafar Zuneilov, who's sixty-one.
The same man told Helsinki Watch that he had heard that his house was
burned, although he himself did not see it burn. He was eventually taken hostage;
while his captors held him briefly in Malybeyli, the man allegedly saw abou t
twelve cars hauling things away from the houses, including carpets.
He told Helsinki Watch:
I didn't see [my house] burn, but I heard when they were taking us to
Stepanakert the commander ordering them to burn the house after they robbed it. I
was in the basement when the [Armenians] came. They said they were orde red not to
burn the house until they robbed it.... I saw the school and the club burning in
the village.
Kerkijahan
Kerkijahan is a village that was inhabited entirely by Azerbaijanis,
consisting of about 320 houses on a hill overlooking Stepanakert. It was attacked
twice in land assaults by Armenian forces - on December 5-6 and on December 28 -
seeking to seize its missile launchers. During these attacks many civilian houses
were reportedly burned. Most of Kerkijahan's women and children left after the
first attack in early December.
Rachel Husugeza, a young Azerbaijani woman who fled on December 5-6, told
Helsinki Watch that "two houses were burning in our neighborhood, and then at
midnight soldiers came to take out the women and children. Forty or fifty peopl e
fled that night to Shusha."
An elderly Azerbaijani woman who stayed on in Kerkijahan until December 28
reported that her nephew had returned to the village and discovered that her house
had been burned. "He said that all the houses had collapsed and that thei r walls
were blackened," she told Helsinki Watch. According to another Azerbaijani woman
interviewed by Helsinki Watch who had worked as a salesperson in Stepanakert until
1988, Garibe Elias, a woman of about fifty-five, attempted to return to Kerkijahan
to get her documents and money she had left. On her way out of the village, she
was reportedly killed along with her husband, and her body mutilated. Djemili
According to Sevendikh Kerimov, Djemili was an Azerbaijani village of about
120 houses surrounded by three Armenian villages (Balodjo, Khannazek, and
Mekhtkend) with which it shared a state farm. Kerimov told Helsinki Watch that his
village was frequently shot at from nearby foothills, and that in January it was
shelled. Houses in Djemili were made of stone and were very close to each other.
He told Helsinki Watch:
During the shelling in January we were staying in a basement, and someone
from the self-defense came and said my house had been struck by a BMP shell. We
could see the house from a distance. It was destroyed, but not burned. Our house
was on the top of the canyon. There were ten [Azerbaijani] OMON in our village,
who mainly lived in people's houses. One lived in my house. There was no militia
station at all. My house was not near any self-defense post. I saw the tanks [tha t
were shelling us] from a distance. I saw four, but there may have been more.
Akholu
Located in the Gadrut district, this Azerbaijani village had about 102
houses and 600 people. The village was reportedly shot at and shelled every day.
Shamama Guleieva, an Azerbaijani from Akholu who worked as a doctor's assistant,
told Helsinki Watch that:
We couldn't even get water. We had to go out of our house through the
window because our door faced the Armenian side and if they saw us they would shoot
at us. During the last month we had to live at our relatives' house.
Guleieva and her husband left with the other villagers on January 9 because the
shelling - involving Alazani rockets, grenades, RPGs, and "other weapons" - became
so bad that it was impossible to stay. [The next morning] we crept through the
bushes and cemetery and saw houses in our village burning. We did not go back to
the village after that. The Armenians had posts - we tried the next morning to
look but they saw us and opened fire. No o ne was injured from that incident,
however.
Kiusular
Kiusular consists of five separate clusters of about forty or fifty houses
each, with a total population of about 2,000. Attacks on Kiusular reportedly began
on December 25, and about February 25 the village's women and children left,
leaving the men to fight. On February 9 the home of M.D., whom Helsinki Watch
interviewed in Yevlakh, was hit with a rocket, destroying one of its sides. M.D.
was in the cellar, located several meters from the house itself. No self- defense
posts w ere in her area: "They shot right in the middle and we had to leave," she
told Helsinki Watch.
Zerefina Guleieva told Helsinki Watch that she left February 26 because
There was shooting every day, then an attack with rockets. Some houses were burned,
and so were the roofs of others. The rockets went off around all five sub-vi llages
and in the center. In one of the sub-villages I saw two houses - one was totally
destroyed and the other was burned. Kiusular was later taken over by Armenian
forces on May 10.
INDISCRIMINATE ATTACKS, TARGETING OF CIVILIAN STRUCTURES
Armenian forces actively shelled and engaged in sniper attacks on towns and
villages. The shelling alone damaged or destroyed hospitals, homes, and other
objects that are not legitimate military targets under applicable humanitarian law
ru les. These attacks killed or left maimed hundreds of civilians, and generally
terrorized the civilian Population.
Shusha
Shusha was the major Azerbaijani stronghold in Nagorno Karabakh until it
was seized by Karabakh forces on May 12, 1992. It was the launching site for
missile attacks on Stepanakert and neighboring towns, and a target for shell fire
from Stepanakert.
Women and children began to be evacuated from Shusha in early February 1992. Some
of the shelling of Shusha was, according to the accounts of former residents,
either indiscriminate or intentionally aimed at civilian targets.
Gulsheli Hasanova, a twenty-two-year-old Azerbaijani woman, told Helsinki
Watch:
We had to leave the city because it was often bombed and because there was
no heat or running water. The shelling had been going on for a long time but
lately it had become impossible to live. Our house had been damaged in the
shelling, but I wasn't there when it happened. Many buildings were destroyed on my
street, Niazi Street - one was destroyed during a funeral. The hospital and
polyclinic were destroyed sometime in 1992. The factory where I worked and m ost
municipal buildings were destroyed, and this all happened in the latest months.
Another young woman, who left Shusha on February 22, reported that her
house was hit by a shell on February 15, destroying the balcony and its adjoining
wall. Her house was located in the town's center, near the market and the cit y
government building. Her mother, who lived with the young woman, reported that in
early March most of the upper part of Shusha had been destroyed, with some damage
done to the mosque.
Rachel Husugeza, who had fled Kerkijahan in early December to stay with
relatives in Shusha, told Helsinki Watch that:
Chiefly the [Armenians] would try to shell military objects and the
hospital. The hospital operating room was destroyed in February. The wall of one
of our bedrooms was destroyed on February 3. The bedroom was destroyed and the
corrid or was damaged. Its windows faced Shusha Kent, where Armenians lived.
Malybeyli and Gushchular
Masahir Bahirov, a former collective farm worker and member of Malybeyli's
self-defense forces, described to Helsinki Watch some of the damage done to his
home by Armenian shelling attacks during the winter of 1992:
Ilived in a house with my father and brother. There were three families living in
the house.... While my father and brother were out def ending the village the roof
was destroyed. A BMP missile hit it and the stones fell in. The shrapnel remained
in the house. This was February 5, and the children were in the basement. No one
fom my family was injured, but our neighbor's ch ild was. He was also staying in
our basement. His name is Niazi Aslanov, he was in the eighth grade, fourteen years
old. He was wounded on the leg and stomach with shrapnel.
Khojaly
Before it was captured by Karabakh Armenian forces, Khojaly had been
shelled continuously during the winter months of 1991-1992 (see above). The
shelling would apparently take place mostly at night. According to r eports from
displaced persons from Khojaly, some of the shelling was indiscriminate, or
directly aimed at civilian targets, and resulted in civilian casualties.
A middle-aged mother of six told Helsinki Watch that although her house had
only been slightly damaged, some of the other houses were either fully destroyed or
had holes in their roofs caused by missile fire. She further provided a brie f
description of the deaths of two of her neighbors, a young, newly married couple
who died in early February when a missile hit their house.
Agdam
In early March, Armenian forces began intense shelling of towns located
along the eastern border separating Nagorno Karabakh from the rest of Azerbaijan.
These towns include Agdam and Fizuli, which are staging grounds fo r Azerbaijani
operations in Nagorno Karabakh. Among the civilian structures destroyed in Agdam
was the central market. Helsinki Watch representatives noted that the market was
totally burned out in what appeared to be a per fect hit, and that little damage
was evident to the streets or houses surrounding it. The makeshift hospital,
located in railroad cars near the Popular Front command headquarters, was bombed in
early March.
An Azerbaijani cafe director told Helsinki Watch
that two people in his neighborhood were killed when a Grad missile exploded, about
March 23. One of them, Ekhbar Husseinov, was returning to his home during the
daytime when a rocket exploded in front of a store. He also reported that he saw
considerable damage on Azbekov, Varashlov and Kirov streets, all apparently
residential areas.
On April 11 at 4:00 P.M. a grenade from an RPG reportedly blew up the
house of Sevil Pashaieva, located in the woods near Agdam. Shrapnel from the
explosion caused head wounds to her year-old son, Semur. According to Semur's
doctors, whom Helsinki Watch interviewed at the Agdam Military Hospital, Mrs.
Pashaieva, who was holding her son in her arms at the time, sustained shrapnel
wounds to her legs.
Abu Gulabli
On April 24, fourteen-year-old Ali Biramov was herding cattle near his home
when fragments from a high caliber machine gun hit his hands; all of his fingers
had to be amputated. It is not known if his home was located near a mil itary
post. Popravent
On April 24 Zahir Gambarov, a twelve-year-old Azerbaijani boy, was playing
in his yard when a shell, apparently from an RPG, exploded near him, causing
shrapnel wounds. His house, located ten meters away from where he was playi ng,
was unharmed. According to the boys account, the village self-defense post is
located in the mountains, and not near his home.
Xhojaly
According to Mr. Bakhimov, 773 hostages were taken at Khojaly, most of
them civilians. Exchange of most these hostages apparently began on the second day
after the storming of Khojaly, when Armenians began to give bac k Azerbaijani women
and children following are the accounts of several individuals captured during
their flight from Khojaly:
Miss Abasova, a twenty-one-year-old woman:
We got near Shelli at about 4:00 P.M. They opened fire on us. We lay down.
There were no soldiers with us. Then we were surrounded. We asked them not to
take us, but they said they couldn't release us and that they had t o take us to
their commander. They took us to Pirdjamal. When we got there we saw people from
another group who had gotten separated from us earlier. I was kept with my family
in an old building with sheep and cattle . Then they separated out the women and
children to exchange them. They began to beat the men with rifle butts and billy
clubs. There was a wall [separating us] but it didn't go to the end, so I could see
a little. My father was beaten. They didn't beat women, but they stole
everything. I was kept three days with my family and two days on my own. We were
taken to Stepanakert with my sisters and other women.
A twenty-year-old Azerbaijani woman who received a bullet wound in her left
foot at Nakhichevanik was reportedly captured along with twelve other people (among
them, five women) by seven or eight Armenians. According to her account, no
members of the self-defense forces were with her. Her captors ordered the group to
give up their valuables, mostly rings, chains, and earrings worn by women. The
woman told Helsinki Watch, "We were taken by foot to the Askeran militia and put in
one cell. All the men were taken away. Then I was put in a cell with thirty or
forty other women from Khojaly. The militia chief came and told us not to be
afraid, that we would be exchanged.... Long-haired men with beards and
bullet-proof vests would come by [and threaten us]. Local Armenians brought us
bread and water.
Gushchular
Twelve hostages were reported to have been seized as a result of the
capture of Gushchular, most of them elderly and all of whom were reported to have
been exchanged. Helsinki Watch spoke with one of them, a woman of about sixty
named Kulu stan Akhmedova, who was captured at Deheraz as she was fleeing. Mrs.
Akhmedova told Helsinki Watch:
Two of us were taken, myself and Guleisha Zenalova. I had taken 6,000
rubies with me. The Armenians took that money and our gold things in Agbulak, and
then they took us to Askeran. They kept us for a week in a KPZ (kamera
predvoritel'nogo zaklsucheniia, or pre-trial detention cell). Then an Armenian
from Ketikh came and took us home for a week. We were the only ones in the KPZ.
They didn't beat us. They gave us a piece of black bread in the mornings and
evenings and a pot of tea. The Armenian [who took us home] gave us things to eat,
potatoes and stuff like that, nuts and things. He said his son was in Shusha and
they were going to exchange us. He didn't beat us or do anything to us. Then we
were taken to Dashalti. Two Armenian men beat us with sticks. They struck us on
our han ds and faces and insulted us in Muslim language [Azerbaijani]. They left
black and blue marks. One of them said the Muslims had killed his father, the
other said they had killed his brother. They left us outdoors, and we two women
were outside all night until morning.
Then they took us to the forest between Shusha and Dashalti and exchanged
us there.
Niazi Zenialov, a sixty-four-year-old man whose mother was killed by
Azerbaijani fighters, related his experience to Helsinki Watch:
They came in about 9:00 or 10:00 A.M. They didn't say anything, they just
hit me on the neck with a rifle butt. Then they said they would take us to
Stepanakert and kill us. They said it in Armenian. [Other] Armenians spoke in wrong
Armenia n. They were speaking a different Armenian dialect I couldn't
understand.... They took four of us in a truck to Malybeyli and then in a van. They
didn't put handcuffs or blindfolds on us. We went to the headquarters in
Stepanakert. One man came to the car, pointed at me and said, 'One of my relatives
has been taken hostage by Azerbaijanis. I'll take him home.' Then three Armenians
came and took the other three and I didn't see them again.
They took me by car to the home of the Armenian. They threw me in the
basement and I stayed there for two months.... They allowed me to get fresh air.
The house was on Gorki Street. Slavik Arapetia n was a hostage of Azerbaijan, and
his wife took good care of me. She's about thirty-five or forty, and taught Russian
in school. She's educated. She said her husband was arrested in May. She said,
'I'm taki ng care of you only because of my husband. There's no food here - how
can I feed you?
When fighters came to beat me up she wouldn't let them; she would fight
with them. They used to come almost every night. They would talk about the
villages they seized and said they would kill my sons.
I was exchanged between Askeran and Agdam.
Bakhlyl Pashaev, a man in his late fifties who took no part in military
activities, told Helsinki Watch that he was captured on February 26, 1992, at
Deheraz as he was fleeing Khojaly. Along with a huge crowd of other Khojaly res
idents, he was taken first to a barn, where their belongings were taken from them
(and apparently never returned). Two days later a group of nineteen Azerbaijanis,
including Pashaev, were taken back to Khojaly, where they were beaten with rifie
butts, and then to the Stepanakert prison. He was detained in a cell along with
seven other people; each day of his detention about five Armenian men reportedly
came to the cell and beat them.
Pashaev and the other captives were given fifty grams of bread per day, and had no
mattresses to sleep on.
During Pashaev's captivity six separate international and humanitarian
delegations visited the Stepanakert prison. Pashaev said that before each of these
visits, his Armenian captors threatened to beat the hostages if the latter told the
mi ssions that they were beaten or related anything about their conditions. Pashaev
was released on April 20, after fifty-five days of captivity.
A twenty-one-year-old Azerbaijani woman' and her brother were seized while
fleeing Khojaly and brought to the Askeran militia. The woman witnessed the
beating of her brother: 2
They wanted to exchange me but I didn't want to go because my brother was
still a hostage. He was beaten for four days. I could hear voices crying. Then I
stayed in a cell with my brother. They beat him in front of me with metal rods,
and bashed his lip with a machine gun. I was released March 4 with my brother and
four other people.
In relation to the Khojaly events, the Azerbaijanis claim that Armenian
forces prevented the rescue of the dead and wounded. Representatives of the
Azerbaijani Procuracy's team investigating Khojaly told Helsinki Watch that
attempts to rescue the wounded and collect the bodies of the dead, which began on
February 27, 1992, were repeatedly either cut short or had to be aborted because of
shooting by Armenian forces. As a result, some victims were left lying in the snow
await ing help. Aiden Rasulov, head of the Procuracy's effort, told Helsinki Watch
that during the first rescue attempt the team saw a girl lying on the ground and
trying to move to amact attention. When the helicopter attempted to land, however,
Armenian forces opened fire.