"We, of course, are rejecting these accusations. All prisoners of war, captured during the war, have been returned to Armenia."
Report informs that in response to a question - "As for the POWs, Human Rights Watch is accusing Azerbaijan of detaining and torturing them. What would be your response to it? As a goodwill gesture, are you ready to swap them with Armenia?” - Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said.
"The Armenian government can confirm this. We returned them before they even returned our prisoners of war. As for those individuals referred to by NGOs, they were sent to our positions by Armenian military commanders two weeks after the end of the war and after the signing of the November Declaration, thus they committed a crime by killing four Azerbaijani servicemen. They were neutralized and arrested. Most of those who were not involved in the crime have already been returned. The perpetrators were punished by courts."
In response to a question "Armenia claims that you are still keeping prisoners of war and you do not tell the truth", the Azerbaijani president said.
"No. These detainees cannot be considered prisoners of war in accordance with all international conventions. Prisoners of war are considered those taken as prisoners during a war. The war was stopped on November 10. In early December, we discovered 62 members of the Armenian sabotage group in our liberated territory. They were sent to the territory on November 26, that is, 16 days after the end of the war. They cannot be considered prisoners of war, and we have already returned many of them as a gesture of goodwill. However, those, who are here to serve their sentences, committed a crime and they had to be brought to justice, and that's what was done."