The Azerbaijani media, citing the announcement of Azerbaijani Ministry of Defence and military procurator’s office, inform, that on the 5th of October, 2010 at 3 am ARM citizen Sanvel Mamikon Saribekyan committed suicide. According to the pres release, there have been signs of hanging on the neck of S. Saribekyan, and no signs of violation have been detected on his body.
Albeit the clarifications from the Armenian side, that the young man was a casual shepherd, who was lost and had crossed the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, the Azerbaijani side insisted that he was a saboteur. Then the Azerbaijani propaganda-machine disseminated a video over the Internet, where Saribekyan was saying that he was allegedly trained for terrorism in Azerbaijan. However, one could clearly see in this video that the man had been tortured.

Having no reason to believe the consequences of the death of the Armenian young man the ARM MoD expresses its concerns in that regard, considering that the country imprisoning Saribekyan is fully responsible for his death. We are asking for the attention of the international organizations, the ICRC in particular, to see that once again Azerbaijan is brutally violating the International Humanitarian norms, particularly the statutory provisions of the convention about “Treating Military Prisoners”. It is also ignoring the efforts of the OSCE MG to peacefully settle the NK conflict, doing such a malice thing on the days of the Field Evaluation Mission of the co-chairs. It is not the first time that Azerbaijan is taking suchlike criminal actions, avoiding any criticism from appropriate international structures. And it was this feeling of non-punishment that killed you fellow citizen, who was not protected by international norms. RA MoD Department of Information and Public Affairs