The Azerbaijani side returned Armenian shepherd Manvel Saribekyan’s body to Armenia, Press Secretary of Armenian Defense Ministry David Karapetyan told NEWS.am. The Armenian side returned Azerbaijani citizen Eldar Tagiyev, who illegally crossed Armenian-Azerbaijani border 10 months ago.

“Armenia Defense Ministry is committed to the agreement, signed at the Presidents’ trilateral meeting in Astrakhan on October 27,” Karapetyan stressed.

The body of Armenian captive was returned on the north-eastern border of Armenian-Azerbaijani line of contact, on November 4, at 12:00 local time.

As NEWS.am reported previously, referring to the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry, the Azerbaijani mass media reported Manvel Saribekyan, an alleged member of the Armenian “diversion” group committed a suicide on October 5. A strangulation scar was discovered on Saribekyan’s neck, characteristic to a hanged person.

“Despite the Armenian side’s comments that Saribekyan was a lost shepherd, who was looking for his missing cattle and crossed the Armenia-Azerbaijani border, Azerbaijan persistently said Saribekyan was a member of an Armenian diversion group. Then the Azerbaijani propaganda machine spread an “interview” with M. Saribekyan through Youtube, in which he says he had been trained for terrorist acts on Azerbaijan’s territory. However, the expert assessment of the video came to a conclusion that Saribekyan was filmed under physical and psychological pressure,” the Armenian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Armenia applied to the U.N., European Union, CE and OSCE and demanded participation of an Armenian expert in Saribekyan’s postmortem examination.