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Armenians File War Crimes Lawsuits Against Azerbaijan

July 27, 2017 By administrator

YEREVAN (RFE/RL)—Hundreds of Armenians have filed government-backed lawsuits in the European Court of Human Rights accusing Azerbaijan of beheading Armenian soldiers and committing other atrocities during last year’s heavy fighting around Nagorno-Karabakh.

Ara Ghazaryan, an Armenian legal expert involved in the unprecedented legal action, said on Tuesday that the Strasbourg-based court has already requested official information from Baku on over 20 of the 359 lawsuits filed from Armenia and Karabakh.

“We expect a just compensation,” Ghazarian told a joint news conference with Armenia’s and Karabakh’s human rights ombudsmen. “It could be both a recognition of the violations [of the European Convention on Human Rights] and subsequent compensation for material and moral damages. But first and foremost, we must ensure that the European Court recognizes that there were violations.”

The war crimes alleged by the plaintiffs stem from the April 2016 hostilities in and around Karabakh which left least 180 soldiers from both warring sides dead. The authorities in Stepanakert and Yerevan say that three Armenian soldiers were beheaded by Azerbaijani troops at the time. They claim that one of them, the 31-year-old Major Hayk Toroyan, was still alive when his Azerbaijani captors began cutting off his head.

The headless body of another soldier, Kyaram Sloyan, was handed over to his family and buried on April 4, 2016, two days after the Azerbaijani army launched an offensive at two sections of the Karabakh “line of contact.” The family living in a village in central Armenia received the 19-year-old’s severed head later on.

According to Karabakh prosecutors, 15 other Armenian soldiers had their ears cut off after being killed by Azerbaijani forces.

Another Armenian lawsuit filed in Strasbourg stems from the violent deaths of three elderly members of a family in Talish, a village in northern Karabakh that was devastated by Azerbaijani shelling in April 2016. They were reportedly murdered by Azerbaijani commandos that burst into their home located on the outskirts of Talish.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Lawsuits, War Crimes

Turkey & Saudi supported Syrian rebels guilty of war crimes: Amnesty International

July 5, 2016 By administrator

AP photo

AP photo

BEIRUT – Agence France-Presse,

Islamist rebels and jihadists in Syria are guilty of war crimes, Amnesty International said in a report on July 5, accusing them of “a chilling wave of abductions, torture and summary killings.”

The London-based rights group named five Syrian anti-regime factions operating in northern Syria: al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, hardliner Ahrar al-Sham, Nureddin Zinki, the Levant Front and Division 16.

The groups have detained and tortured lawyers, journalists, and children — among others — for criticizing them, committing acts seen as immoral, or being minorities, the report said.   “Many civilians live in constant fear of being abducted if they criticize the conduct of armed groups in power or fail to abide by the strict rules that some have imposed,” said Philip Luther, head of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa program.

“In Aleppo and Idlib today, armed groups have free rein to commit war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law with impunity,” he added.

The report is based on 24 accounts of abduction by anti-regime groups between 2012 and 2016 and another five cases of torture.

Halim, a humanitarian worker, was kidnapped and tortured by Nureddin Zinki rebels in Aleppo city until he confessed to a crime.

“When I refused to sign the confession paper the interrogator ordered the guard to torture me,” he said.

“He then started beating me with cables on the soles of my feet. I couldn’t bear the pain so I signed the paper,” Halim said.

Jihadist and hardline religious groups operate their own religious courts which punish crimes such as apostasy or adultery with death.

Saleh was held by al-Nusra in late 2014, and was told by his guard that five women accused of adultery would “only be forgiven by death.”

He said he later watched a video showing al-Nusra militants publicly killing one of women execution-style.

Amnesty said it documented violations in Idlib, which is held by al-Nusra and its allies, and Aleppo.

Syria’s conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests but has since broken down into all-out war, leaving more than 280,000 people dead.

Rights groups have accused both the regime of Bashar al-Assad and anti-government factions of indiscriminate attacks, torture and detention.

Amnesty called on world powers to “pressure armed groups to end such abuses and comply with the laws of war.”

The report said regional powers must also stop providing weapons or other forms of support to any factions involved in war crimes or other violations.

It said some of the accused groups “are believed to have the support of governments such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the U.S.”

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: amnesty international, rebels, Syrian, War Crimes

Syrian rebels may have committed war crimes in Aleppo – Amnesty

May 13, 2016 By administrator

© Hosam Katan / Reuters

© Hosam Katan / Reuters

Syrian rebels may have committed war crimes in their bombardment of a Kurdish-controlled area of Aleppo, killing dozens of innocent civilians, according to Amnesty International.

The rights watchdog says it has collected eyewitness testimony and videos which suggest that at least 83 civilians – including 30 children – were killed in the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood of Aleppo, a city split between government and rebel control. The killings reportedly took place between February and April.

“Armed groups surrounding the Sheikh Maqsoud district…have repeatedly carried out indiscriminate attacks that have struck civilian homes, streets, markets and mosques, killing and injuring civilians and displaying a shameful disregard for human life,” Amnesty said in a Friday statement.

The organization’s deputy Middle East director, Magdalena Mughrabi, said the attacks “may amount to war crimes,” Reuters reported.

“By firing imprecise explosive weapons into civilian neighborhoods the armed groups attacking Sheikh Maqsoud are flagrantly flouting the principle of distinction between civilian and military targets, a cardinal rule of international humanitarian law,” Mughrabi said.

The violence is part of intense fighting in the region between the Kurdish YPG militia – which is backed by the US in the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) – and rebel groups, some of which are backed by foreign countries via Turkey.

The YPG and its allies have been battling insurgents, including some Islamist groups, in the northern Aleppo province for several months. Shellings of Sheikh Maqsoud, which has a large Kurdish population, have intensified since February.

Both sides have accused the other of killing civilians.

Rebels claim the YPG wants to take control of a road which provides access from Turkey to Aleppo’s rebel-held areas. They also say the YPG is working in cahoots with the Syrian government – a claim which the YPG denies.

The YPG currently holds and uninterrupted 400km (250 mile) stretch of territory along the Syria-Turkey border. Turkey, which is fighting Kurdish militants in a controversial operation in the country’s southeast, views any YPG expansion with concern.

But despite any disapproval from Turkey, the YPG has been praised for its efforts against IS militants in Syria. The militia has been the most effective partner on the ground in the US-led campaign against IS, seizing large areas from the group last year.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Aleppo, amnesty, committed, rebels, Syrian, War Crimes

War Crimes Against Christians

April 16, 2016 By administrator

Crossby Joachim Hagopian,

Compelling evidence is mounting daily of egregious war crimes committed by Azerbaijan’s military in the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (NK). Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev launched an unprovoked large-scale military offensive during the early morning hours of April 2nd attempting to break through the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army’s contact line in attacks coming from three separate directions using mortars, rocket launchers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, surveillance and kamikaze drones and helicopters.Heavy Azeri shelling of Armenian residential areas destroyed civilian homes in several villages in both the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as the Republic of Armenia. In NK’s Martuni region a 12-year old boy was killed attending school and two other children were seriously injured. Soon after the volleys of mortar fire, the Azerbaijani military overran Armenian villages in the Martakert area and broke into homes in the village of Talish where many homes were damaged or destroyed. Azeri soldiers murdered at point blank gunshot range an elderly husband and wife including their 92-year old family relative, ultimately cutting the married couple’s ears off that strongly suggest the presence of Islamic State terrorists. 3000 known Azeris joined ISIS and a number of them are believed to have rushed from the Syrian battlefields returning home to fight on the fresh Nagorno-Karabakh warfront.

An Armenian Yezidi soldier was also beheaded, the all too familiar brutality that’s become an Islamic State trademark in its ethnic cleansing of thousands of Yezidi Christians in Iraq. The Yezidi soldier’s parents said that when their son’s body was returned, they buried him not knowing he had been beheaded. They only learned of his cruel fate after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) arranged a plan for each side to exchange corpses of dead soldiers that returned their son’s severed head. The coffin had to be dug up to bury their son’s head with his body on April 9.

Moreover, the retrieved corpses of 18 Armenian soldiers showed signs that they had been mutilated and tortured. After the major fighting broke out from April 2-7, the ICRC acted as mediator for deceased soldiers to be recovered. Officials from the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic’s State Commission on Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing Persons observed that all 18 bodies of the Armenian soldiers had been badly mutilated and tortured and issued the following statement:

Those acts, being a flagrant manifestation of inhumanity, run counter to the laws and customs of war and are in grave violation of the international humanitarian law, in particular, the Convention (I) for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field (1949), Geneva Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1949) and the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I).

The NKR Prosecutor General’s Office has charged Azerbaijan with seven criminal cases in violation of international law: “using prohibited methods and means of warfare, targeting of civilians, shelling of populated areas motivated by national, racial or religious hatred or religious fanaticism.”

The Yezidi Armenian soldier apparently wasn’t the only Armenian in uniform who was decapitated. Chairman of the Foundation Against Violation of the Law Michael Aramyan disclosed that at least two other Armenian soldiers, one from Yerevan and another from Artsakh, “have been subjected to torture and then beheaded.” Murder, ill-treatment, torture, humiliation all constitute violations of the Criminal Code.

On April 11 the Armenian Ministry of Defense (MoD) confirmed the Red Cross mediated bodies to be exchanged and that authorities in both Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh are collecting and compiling overwhelming evidence of Azerbaijan’s humanitarian crimes of international law. Earlier this week the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs met in Yerevan with Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian who also met on Wednesday with OSCE ambassadors stating:

With its aggressive actions Azerbaijan actually tried to refuse from its international commitments of solving the issue in a peaceful way, thus grossly violating the basic principles of international law, the decisions and declarations of a number of OSCE summits and Ministerial Councils, obviously ignoring the statements on the heads of OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing countries on the settlement of the Karabakh issue.

James Warlick, the US co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group responsible for resolving the Azeri-Armenian conflict since the Nagorno-Karabakh War ended in 1994 had this to say at an April 9 press conference:

We are deeply distressed by our reports of human rights violations. We have seen the photos, we have heard the reports… we are deeply troubled, deeply concerned by any human rights violations.

Meanwhile every day since the Russian-brokered ceasefire on April 5 repeated violations by Azeri forces are tallied, inflicting more injury and death. As a typical example, on the overnight of April 11-12, both rifle and heavy artillery fire from the Azeri army contact line was observed. Though both sides have perennially claimed ceasefire violations, the Armenians have long agreed to have Minsk Group investigators enact a mechanism by which to document ceasefire violations but as a member of the European Parliament from Cyprus just stated the Baku government has consistently refused to cooperate. This could also be ameliorated by a deployment of a Russian peacekeeping force that Moscow’s Defense Minister Lavrov as well as Armenian President Sarkisian have been recently alluding to, although the Russian Minsk group chair Igor Popov has relegated the peacekeeping plan to a final stage in conflict resolution, not an immediate intervention.

 

In the meantime as the facts emerge pointing to a premeditated Azeri military offensive with US Empire approval, a diversionary game is devised that desperate, among the world’s most corrupt dictators Ilham Aliyev uses to his advantage to diffuse his mounting troubles and unrest at home. A typical wag the dog politician trick to take pressure off by playing the jingoistic game of targeting a foreign enemy for war to manipulatively unite and distract Azeris from their slumping oil economy driving high domestic unemployment and growing civil unrest against an oppressive totalitarian criminal regime. Add BP among Western oil giants to the self-serving mix to make sure the despot stays in power if only to bleed maximum profits after already investing $58 billion in recent years to develop the oil-rich Caspian oil and gas fields, along with newly proposed pipelines to deflate Russian gas export to Europe. Ultimately all Empire-dictator roads lead to eliminating their biggest scapegoated threat – the tiny independent NKR enclave. Hence, conjure up a religious war against the Armenians.

Part of this devious strategy involves Turkish and Azeri public displays calling for unity amongst all Islamic groups and nations in support of Azerbaijan’s “holy war” against NG Armenians “till the end of time,” thus fomenting an anti-Armenian crusade spilling over into public protests by Muslims in Paris and Stockholm. Turkish and Azeri nationals chanted “death to Armenians” inspired by a hate filled speech delivered by a prominent Turkish leader in Sweden. Of course there’s nothing new in hatred of Armenians but its public expression currently being acted out to fuel the thinly veiled hints from Turkish leadership promoting a religious war against Christian Armenians neatly timed with the Armenian genocide’s 101st anniversary underscores a surging information propaganda war. Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Savarsh Kocharyanastutely sees what Turkey et al’s up to:

Foreign Minister of Turkey in his speech at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation speculated on the Islamic solidarity and made a dangerous attempt to artificially present the Azerbaijani military operations against self-determined Nagorno-Karabakh as a religious conflict.

Erdogan’s spending millions on US public relations lobbyist firms that have included an ex-CIA directortargeting Armenians as the latest enemy to demonize at the same time a recent billboard briefly went up in Boston, home of a large Armenian American community, denying the Armenian genocide.

Then the virtual news blackout of events in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. What little coverage there has been typically refers to the NK Armenians as “separatists” occupying Azeri land rather than Armenians who are forced to defend themselves and their ancient homeland against a malevolent invading force. The US media’s overt blockade suppressing the truth of Azeri atrocities in Artsakh (the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh) is designed not only to keep America in the dark but also to cover-up US Empire’s complicity in Azerbaijan’s criminal aggression as yet another proxy war against Russia.

The neocons are still fuming as much as Erdogan over their precious proxy war terrorist allies getting their asses kicked by Putin in Syria. So what do they do? Immediately unleash Aliyev’s unilateral attack turning up more cold war heat by starting yet another war on Russia’s doorstep. It’s getting as predictable as all theWestern state-sponsored terrorism. Manufactured wars and manufactured mass migration crises are all designed to stir up more divide and rule racial and religious hatred spawning yet more wars and widespread violence as the globalist calling card agenda delivered by US Empire-Israel-NATO allies. The war against Armenians is not some unrelated, randomized accident. Virtually every major world event is preplanned according to the diabolical scheme of the ruling elite bent on its New World Order and one world government.

But fortunately with the truth clearer than ever now, the tide is turning. The EU parliament has taken up debate over the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute and a growing number of vocal members are calling for recognition of the current NKR as an independent sovereign enclave leaving it up to its citizens to determine their own fate to become part of Armenia or not. Cyprus EU member Eleni Theocharous not only recommended sanctions against Azerbaijan, she summed it up this way:

It is therefore the EU’s responsibility to support the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, who fight for their freedom, and thus not to support the continuation of an unjust status quo. Peace equals recognition of the right to self-determination for the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Luxemburg EU member Frank Engel also recognizes Azerbaijan as the chief villain in the Azeri-Armenian conflict:

The only solution is the recognition of the independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh, because today Azerbaijan is the aggressor, and it was the aggressor 24 years ago, and continued to violate the ceasefire on a smaller scale, and Baku glorifies a convicted killer, Ramil Safarov and believes that all Armenians in the region must disappear.

Safarov was the Azeri soldier who in 2004 took an axe and hacked up an Armenian officer who was asleep while both were participating in a NATO “Partner for Peace” program in Hungary. After a short prison spell in Hungary, Aliyev welcomed the axe murderer home as a war hero with a promotion and back pay.

Even a couple of US Congress members are pushing to ban arms sales and foreign aid to Azerbaijan. So are a few Israelis whose government’s latest missile shipment arrived in Azerbaijan the day before the Azeris’ military attack. In recent years Israel has signed $5 billion in arms deals with Azerbaijan. Concerned over another shipment of drones set to be delivered to Baku in the next few days, in a letter to Israeli Defense Minister, the Meretz head Zehava Galon stated:

There is a serious fear that laws of war were violated with Israeli weapons. I ask that you order the halting of additional drone supplies to Azerbaijan until a commitment is obtained not to use them in battles in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) has just sent a letter to Obama and Congress recommending economic sanctions against Azerbaijan for its war crimes pending the outcome of a Leahy law investigation. War crime violators by law are prohibited from receiving US military aid of any kind.

Twenty-seven nations have officially recognized the Armenian genocide. Germany may be the 28th as its Bundestag is scheduled to vote on formal recognition on June 2nd. Support for the Armenian people around the world is growing and self-determination is the operative word for the little independent de facto government of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Though Russia is considered Armenia’s closest friend and ally, some believe that Russia is not behaving like it. Despite its mutual defense pact, well known Russian TV and radio journalist and political analyst Vladimir Solovyov urged Russia not to shrink from its duty as a Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) ally of Armenia. He points out the fact that Azerbaijan was clearly the aggressor that attacked Nagorno-Karabakh. Solovyov warns Moscow that continuing to arm Azerbaijan in view of its unilateral attack on Armenians without any preconditions for future arms sales risks – in absence of Russian support, Armenia turning away from Russia, implying that Armenia could potentially align itself with the United States. As its closest CSTO ally in the South Caucasus, and the Russian Federation’s weakest link in the southern part of the nation, Solovyov maintains that Russia is ill-advised to lose Armenia as its most loyal friend in the region. His criticism of Russia not taking more of a stand in support of its supposed ally seems well taken:

Interestingly enough, we don’t discuss the question of who started it. Why don’t we want to see the broadcasts about beheaded Armenian soldiers, about capture and torture of people? I realize that we must consider the interests of both sides, but does it mean that we’re no longer interested in the truth? Turkey publicly declared it would support Azerbaijan; did we issue a similar statement with regard to our ally? Let us remember that Azerbaijan fired at Tavush Province of Armenia. That is the territory of Armenia and the CSTO kept silent about that fact.

The post War Crimes Against Christians appeared first on LewRockwell.

Source: http://weseekthetruth.com/author/joachim-hagopian/

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: against, Christians, War Crimes

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