YEREVAN. – Andrey Kovatchev, the European Parliament's Standing Rapporteur on Armenia and Vice-Chair of the Group of the European People's Party, together with MEPs Francois-Xavier Bellamy and Loucas Fourlas, have launched and petitioned, along with 119 other MPs, president Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission and president Charles Michel of the European Council, calling on to force Azerbaijan to release the Armenian POWs. Arman Yeghoyan, an MP of the ruling My Step bloc, stated this at Tuesday’s session of the National Assembly of Armenia.

According to him, the aforesaid European lawmakers noted in their petition that we are talking about 72 people whose captivity is recognized by Azerbaijan, as well as 112 people about whom the Azerbaijani side does not provide any information, and 61 people whose captivity Baku denies, whereas there is evidence of their captivity.

The petition notes that, despite its commitments, Azerbaijan has been holding several hundred Armenian POWs and civilians for six months now, refusing to return them under various pretexts. Moreover, Baku cynically states that all the captives and POWs have been returned to the Armenian side, whereas the rest are "terrorists."

To note, Armenia’s representatives at the ECHR reported on Monday that the Azerbaijani military had tortured and killed 19 Armenian servicemen and civilians, including four women.