The Human Rights Defenders (Ombudsmen) of Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR/Artsakh) have issued a joint statement.

In the statement, they call on Azerbaijan to carry out its obligation under the international humanitarian law, and ensure the return of the driver’s license of Armenian military serviceman, Lieutenant Colonel Aleksan Arakelyan—who had fallen during the four-day war which Azerbaijan had unleashed against Artsakh in early April—, to his family.

As reported earlier, Arakelyan’s driver’s license was found recently in front of a house in Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan.

In their statement, the Armenia and NKR Ombudsmen added that the Azerbaijani authorities are obligated to give a detailed public explanation as to how this document belonging to Lieutenant Colonel Arakelyan had appeared in Baku, and in a public area, at that.

In addition, the Human Rights Defenders  of Armenia and NKR urged the international organizations that have a human rights mandate to closely follow the course of implementation of actions by the Azerbaijani authorities toward eliminating this violation of the international humanitarian law, and conducting an investigation into the causes of this violation.