Baku, Azerbaijan, July 29
Trend:
The criminal case against the Gevorgyans, an Armenian family that voluntarily crossed into Azerbaijan, was submitted to a court in Armenia, the Armenian media reported July 29.
The criminal case against the Gevorgyan family was launched by the Armenian National Security Service, which stated that it initiated the case in line with an article on the illegal crossing of the state border.
Yegishe Gevorgyan (born 1958), his wife Ruzanna Mardanyan (born 1982) and three children - Alfred (born 2002), Gayane (born 2003) and Petros (born 2006) - illegally crossed the Armenian-Azerbaijani border moving into the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic on January 10, 2010.
They said at the time that they had to leave Armenia due to unbearable living conditions and asked to send them to a third country.
On December 12, 2014, Azerbaijan handed over the Gevorgyan family to the Armenian side.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the US are currently holding peace negotiations.
Armenia has not yet implemented the UN Security Council's four resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.
Edited by SI