The court hearing of the criminal case into the two members of an Azerbaijani intelligence-gathering sabotage team continued Friday at the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), or Artsakh, capital city Stepanakert Court of First Instance.
At this hearing, the court issued details from the video recordings which the Azerbaijani saboteurs had made.
Artsakhpress reported that to Prosecutor Karen Gabrielyan’s question to defendant Dilham Askerov as to why he had earlier stated that they had not come across any soldiers when crossing the Karabakh-Azerbaijan border in the case when it was noted in the respective video recording that the Azerbaijani soldiers were telling them that, as if, they would die of starvation in the Shahumyan Region of Karabakh, whereas there is a lot of food here, the defendant denied this fact saying that he had not made any such comment, or video recording.
Askerov, who is also charged with the murder of Smbat Tsakanyan, also denied the prosecution’s evidence, according to which, meaning Tsakanyan, he had said in another video recording that they have picked up and are taking along with them a nearly twenty-year-old “piggy,” whom they cannot yet release, but Shahbaz Guliyev is watching over him.
Askerov agreed that even though the examination of his automatic weapon and the dead body of this Armenian teen prove to his guilt, he denied his involvement in the murder.
It is also noteworthy that Dilham Askerov has given contradictory testimony. On the one hand, he stated that Hasan Hasanov had picked up his automatic weapon wherewith they had killed Tsakanyan, and on the other hand, he noted that he had not exchanged his weapon with none of the sabotage team members.
According to the NKR Police, Azerbaijani citizens Shahbaz Guliyev (born in 1968), Dilham Askerov (born in 1960), and Hasan Hasanov, who was shot by law enforcement agents at the spot, illegally crossed the state border of Karabakh armed with a weapon and ammunition on June 29. The three entered the territory of the Shahumyan region of Karabakh as enemy spies to collect information and carry out espionage tasks.
On July 4, they kidnapped and murdered the citizen of Karabakh, 17-year-old Smbat Tsakanyan, whose body was found on July 15 with gunshot wounds in the forest at Shahumyan region. In addition, in the evening of July 11, on Vardenis-Karvachar highway Hasanov killed the resident of Yerevan Sargis Abrahamyan (born in 1971), and severely wounded the resident of Armenian Dzoraghbyur village Karine Davtyan.
Hasanov was armed and resisted during the arrest; as a result, he was neutralized by the NKR special forces. The two others, Shahbaz Guliyev and Dilham Askerov, were arrested and detained.
Dilham Askerov is charged for espionage; unauthorized border trespass; kidnapping and violence against a minor, committed by an organized group; murder committed by an organized group motivated by ethnic hatred; attempt of murder of two persons, committed by an organized group, motivated by ethnic hatred. Shahbaz Guliyev is charged for espionage; unauthorized border trespass; kidnapping and violence against a minor, committed by an organized group; murder committed by an organized group motivated by ethnic hatred.
