\n Armenia on Friday accused Azerbaijan of committing war crimes during their conflict last year over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, after Human Rights Watch said Azerbaijan had mistreated prisoners of war.\n<\/p>\n
\n The ex-Soviet Caucasus countries had been locked for decades in a territorial dispute over the mountainous region in Azerbaijan, where fighting erupted in September, claiming the lives of some 6,000 people.\n<\/p>\n
\n The six-week war ended after Azerbaijan made swift gains and Armenian capitulated to a Russian-brokered ceasefire under which it ceded swathes of territories to Baku.\n<\/p>\n
\n Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in report Friday that Azerbaijani troops \"abused Armenian prisoners of war..., subjecting them to cruel and degrading treatment and torture.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Azerbaijan should also immediately release all remaining POWs and civilian detainees,\" the advocacy group said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Armenian foreign ministry spokeswoman Anna Naghdalyan said the report proved that Baku committed \"large-scale war crimes against Armenian prisoners of war\".\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The reports of ill-treatment and torture of Armenian POWs indicate systematic nature. Their continued captivity and torture may amount to crimes against humanity,\" Naghdalyan told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n Baku has denied the accusations, and insisted that all the Armenian prisoners were returned to Armenia.\n<\/p>\n
\n But Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said Wednesday that \"Baku doesn't consider Armenian troops detained in Karabakh after ceasefire as prisoners of war\".\n<\/p>\n
\n He earlier accused Armenian forces of \"grave violations of international humanitarian law tantamount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Amnesty International in December urged both Baku and Yerevan to urgently probe \"war crimes\" committed by both sides.\n<\/p>\n
\n While Armenia has not opened any investigations, Azerbaijan charged two of its soldiers in December for mutilating bodies of Armenian soldiers.\n<\/p>\n
\n Nagorno-Karabakh is an ethnic Armenian region that broke from Azerbaijan's control during a war in the early 1990s.\n<\/p>\n
\n Armenia's defeat to Baku's technologically superior army last year spurred a political crisis with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreeing this week to snap elections later this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Armenia on Friday accused Azerbaijan of committing war crimes during their conflict last year over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, after Human Rights Watch said Azerbaijan had mistreated prisoners of war. The ex-Soviet Caucasus countries had been locked for decades in a territorial dispute over the mountainous region in Azerbaijan, where fighting erupted in September, claiming the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-75064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n