Survivors remember Meshali massacre committed by Armenia - REPORTAGE
The massacre committed by Armenian militants in December 1991 in the village of Meshali of Azerbaijan’s Khojaly district has not been erased from the memory of the inhabitants of this village. They have not forgotten what happened on that cold winter day. The Armenian attack on Meshali claimed the lives of 25 innocent people and left 14 others severely injured. Armenian executioners, in particular Vagif Khachatryan, tortured the villages and committed atrocities. Most of the dead and injured as a result of the massacre were children, teenagers and the elderly.
Residents of Khojaly’s Meshali district have been living in the Meshali settlement of Goranboy district for 14 years. Today, Meshali settlement is home to nearly 430 people, News.Az reports citing AZERTAC.
Residents say that Vagif Khachatryan and his accomplices have always shown hatred and cruelty towards Azerbaijanis. Even before the eruption of the First Karabakh War, they openly threatened the inhabitants with death. Their goal was in every possible way to force the inhabitants to leave their ancestral lands. The separatists have repeatedly taken hostage several Meshali residents, who were heading to their villages, and they tried to burn them in a car.
Meshali resident Ziyaddin Salmanov, a former police officer, who joined the defense of the village during the Armenian attacks, says that in front of his eyes Armenian militants ruthlessly killed the unarmed villagers.
“At that time, they brutally killed my police colleagues Allahverdi and Ismail. One of the masterminds behind this massacre was Vagif Khachatryan. He gathered relatives around him and created an armed detachment. Khachatryan shouted into a megaphone in Azerbaijani: “We surrounded the village and you need to surrender.” Once in the village of Badara, Khachatryan wanted to burn us alive in his Niva car,” Salmanov added.
In the village of Meshali, the Armenian executioners tortured five members of the Novruzov family to death. In one night, Novruz Novruzov, his wife Adila Novruzova, a son and two daughters were killed. Zamina Aliyeva, the family's eldest child, bitterly recalls what happened during this tragedy with her brother and other family members.
“After the Armenian militants killed my family members, they tortured and burned the bodies. One of my sisters had 78 bullet wounds in her leg even though she was shot in the heart. They were all tortured. They completely burned down our house and our economy, which we created with difficulty. I survived by accident. Their goal was to kill everyone,” Aliyeva added.
Meshali residents welcomed the news of the detention of Vagif Khachatryan, an internationally wanted fugitive of the Meshali massacre. They expressed confidence that soon other Armenian executioners would also be brought to justice.
Earlier, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Azerbaijan reported that Vagif Khachatryan, an internationally wanted fugitive of the Meshali massacre of December 22, 1991, was detained by the military personnel of the State Border Service at the Lachin border crossing point of the Azerbaijan-Armenia state border while trying to go to the Republic of Armenia for treatment through the mediation of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The investigation established that Vagif Cherkezovich Khachatryan, born in 1955, a citizen of the Republic of Azerbaijan, born in Badara village of Askaran district and worked as a driver in Khankendi city automobile transport company, residing in Meshali village, together with other people of Armenian nationality, used various weapons, including firearms and infantry fighting vehicles, to destroy the village.
Using various weapons, including firearms and infantry fighting vehicles, they raided the village and killed 25 people of Azerbaijani nationality, injured 14 people, and contrary to national and international law norms expelled 358 Azerbaijanis from their domicile.
In addition, Vagif Cherkezovich Khachatryan continued his criminal actions together with his accomplices, destroying and damaging property belonging to the state and villagers, causing a total of 5 million 496 thousand 900 manats of material damage.
Since sufficient reasonable suspicions arose regarding the criminal case, it was decided to involve Vagif Cherkezovich Khachatryan as an accused person under articles 103 (massacre) and 107 (deportation or forced movement of the population) of the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan. However, due to the fact that his whereabouts were unknown to the investigation, on November 12, 2013, an international arrest warrant was applied by the court's decision.
Vagif Khachaturyan was explicitly placed in a medical facility in Baku and provided with the necessary medical assistance and conditions for ICRC representatives to visit him.
At present, operative and investigative measures are being conducted to bring the other accused persons to justice.
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