YEREVAN. – Representatives of the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) mission in Nagorno-Karabakh have seen Azerbaijani citizens Dilham Askerov and Shahbaz Guliyev, who are serving prison sentences in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR).

ICRC Yerevan Office Communications Officer Zara Amatuni told about the aforesaid to Armenian News-NEWS.am.

The visits were made on January 16 and 21, and letters were exchanged during this visit.

According to the NKR Police, Azerbaijani citizens Shahbaz Guliyev (born in 1968), Dilham Askerov (born in 1960), and Hasan Hasanov—who was killed by the Armenian armed forces while rendering the saboteurs ineffective—had illegally crossed the state border of Karabakh on June 29, 2014, and they were armed with weapons and ammunition. The three entered the territory of the Shahumyan region of Karabakh as spies to collect information and carry out espionage.

On July 4, 2014, they kidnapped and subsequently murdered a Karabakh citizen, 17-year-old Smbat Tsakanyan, whose body was found on July 15, 2014, with gunshot wounds in a forest at Shahumyan region.

In addition, on the evening of July 11, 2014, Hasanov had killed Armenia capital city Yerevan resident Sargis Abrahamyan (born in 1971), and severely wounded Armenia’s Dzoraghbyur village resident Karine Davtyan, on the Vardenis-Karvachar Highway. Hasanov was armed and he resisted arrest; as a result, he was neutralized by the NKR special forces. Guliyev and Askerov, on the other hand, were detained, and they faced trial in the NKR.

And on December 29, 2014, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic court sentenced Dilham Askerov and Shahbaz Guliyev to life and 22 years, respectively, in prison.