Former Armenian official in breakaway region in Karabakh captured by Azerbaijan

By Ruslan Rahimov

BAKU, Azerbaijan (AA) – A former official of an unrecognized Armenian breakaway region of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh territory has been captured, Azerbaijan announced Saturday.

David Babayan, who served as the so-called deputy presidential secretary, presidential adviser for foreign affairs, and foreign minister in the unrecognized breakaway region, was apprehended, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General's Office said in a statement

Babayan, like other officials of the breakaway region, had connections to deadly missile attacks on the Azerbaijani city of Ganja during the second Karabakh war of fall 2020, it added.

In two missile strikes on Ganja, a city of about a half-million people far from the front line, Armenia killed over two dozen civilians, including two children and two infants, and injured scores of others.

The attacks in mid-October 2020 violated a brief armistice from the conflict.

Azerbaijani courts had previously issued an arrest warrant and international arrest warrant for Babayan, the statement added.

In the fall of 2020, Azerbaijan liberated several cities, villages and settlements in Karabakh from Armenian occupation during 44 days of clashes. The war ended with a Russia-brokered cease-fire.

Then, earlier this month, in the wake of provocations by Armenian forces in Karabakh, Azerbaijan said it had launched "counter-terrorism" activities to uphold the trilateral peace pact. After 24 hours, a cease-fire was reached, with Azerbaijan widely seen as the victor.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan are set to meet on Oct. 5 in the Spanish city of Granada to discuss the signing of a peace treaty between the two countries.

*Writing by Alperen Aktas from Istanbul