Azerbaijan’s Lezgians Attempt to Cross Artsakh Border with White Flag

YEREVAN (Panorama.am) — About 25 residents of the village Ketuklu of Gabala district inhabited mainly with Lezgians tried to pass to the territory of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic to the direction of Aghdam with white flags in their hands, Minval.az reports.

According to media reports, the police encircled and detained the deserters. One of the members of the group, Ramin Ismayilov, said the cause of the villagers’ protest was the unfair behavior of the Nabiyev family, who hold important posts in the region.

“The Nabiyevs slandered and illegally arrested our children. Gara Nabiyev, representative of Baku ‘Azerishig’; Musavar Nabiyev, advisor of the Tax Minister; and Ikram Nabiyev, representative of the executive power in the village, have taken our region under their control. They do not let us live. They throw drugs into the villagers’ houses and cars, and then order to arrest innocent people. We are sick and tired of that, that is why we attempted to pass to the Armenian side,” the villagers complain demanding that a representative of the Administration of the President of Azerbaijan hear their objections.

All the 25 inhabitants are detained at the moment and are at the police department.

Earlier, there were numerous reports about Azerbaijani civilians passing or attempting to pass the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and surrender themselves to Armenia or to Artsakh.

On 23 January 2014, dozens of residents of Beylagan region, Azerbaijan, in protest against the demolition of their houses by the chief executive body tried to pass to the territory of Nagorno Karabakh Republic. On 29 January 2014, an Azerbaijani citizen Javid Orujov, resident of Baku born in 1976, appealed to the Armenian border guards on the Armenian-Georgian border, asking for a political asylum for him, his wife and their three young children. On 12 April 2014, Nazim Mammadov, a resident of Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic, was detained by the Azerbaijani military while attempting to cross the border with Armenia with a white flag in his hands. Earlier, in 2010, Nariman Agayev, from Goychay district, threatened to seek for asylum in Armenia because the investigator handed his daughter’s corpse to him only after getting a bribe of $1000.