News - Siranush Sahakyan: Azerbaijan's ulterior motive is to portray Karabakh as terrorist organization

The ulterior motive of Azerbaijan is to present the Artsakh Republic of as a terrorist organization and to deny the established reality that the Armenians have had the right to self-determination realized by international law. Siranush Sahakyan, president of the International and Comparative Law Center, stated this at a press conference Monday—and referring to the fact that Azerbaijan tries to present even its Armenian prisoners of war as terrorists. "We know that the Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)] Republic was legally engaged in various negotiations, and the negotiators perceived it as a legitimate party, and the most diverse issues were discussed with them, including the issue of the status of Artsakh. "These are vivid arguments that having a role in statehood does not constitute a basis for any crime. If the imputed crime is irrelevant and unsubstantiated, it is in this case that we are talking about arbitrary deprivation of liberty; another interesting fact that speaks about trends. Even during the war that was ongoing, when the Armenian side had captives, again Azerbaijan tended to attribute those captives to terrorism. "Here we are facing a chronic psychological problem as well. Every act is tried to be presented to the international community through the prism of terrorism. For a long time, our prisoners of war were accused of terrorism, even in the conditions of a group's capture in Khtsaberd [village of Artsakh]. Of course, at some point they gave up on the terrorist article, presented yet another illegal charge, but this shows the main trend: attribute terrorism to Armenians," said Sahakyan. She expressed her conviction that the ulterior motive of this is to portray the Artsakh Republic as a terrorist organization, and to deny the fact that the Armenians had the right to self-determination realized by international law.