YEREVAN. – The Azerbaijani authorities, by sentencing Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) citizen Arsen Baghdasaryan to fifteen years in prison, want to contradistinguish him with the Azerbaijani criminals who committed crimes, killed people, etc. in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Minister of Defense of Armenia, Seyran Ohanyan, told the aforementioned to reporters on Thursday.

“They want to show that we [i.e. the Armenian side] [allegedly] have citizens who attempted to carry out acts of sabotage in the territory of Azerbaijan,” the minister said.

As reported earlier, the Azerbaijan authorities have sentenced captured NKR citizen Arsen Baghdasaryan to fifteen years in a maximum security prison.

Within the framework of this hastily concocted case, Arsen Baghdasaryan was charged with “sabotage.”

But this action by the Azerbaijan authorities was just a reprisal to the arrest and subsequent conviction, in the NKR, of Azerbaijani saboteurs Dilham Askerov and Shahbaz Guliyev, who were detained with weapons in their hands and who plead guilty in court.

The case brought against Arsen Baghdasaryan is also a vivid illustration of Azerbaijan’s violation of international human rights. The Azerbaijani authorities had not permitted the International Committee of the Red Cross representatives to see him for 1.5 months since his capture. Baghdasaryan was taken into Azerbaijan captivity on December 26 of the year past.