If we take visible steps, the captives may never return. Speaker of the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia, Alen Simonyan, told this to reporters at the NA Tuesday—and referring to the accusations that the Armenian authorities are not taking visible steps towards the return of Armenians being held captive in Azerbaijan.

"So how did it become 23 out of those 150 [Armenian] people [being held captive in Azerbaijan]? I'll tell you something else: if we subtract the 11-12 from those 23 who were caught [by Azerbaijan] at the checkpoint when leaving Karabakh, after the 44-day war [in 2020] there were approximately 10-11 [Armenian] people had remained there, out of the 152 confirmed [Armenian] captives [in Azerbaijan]," the NA speaker said.

Simonyan stated that there is no meeting where they do not raise the issue of these Armenian captives.

“Even during my meetings with the head of the Azerbaijani Milli Majlis [i.e. the parliament], this issue was on the table and this issue was a priority. I am afraid that one of the reasons—if not the main one—for not continuing the meetings was that I insisted too much.

Today I have a meeting also with one of the relatives of one of the captives, which, one can say, is already of a periodic nature. So I ask you: if you want the [Armenian] captives to return [from Azerbaijan], let's not ‘touch’ on this topic too much because experience shows that this process continues and is a priority for us,” said the Armenian NA speaker.