Page For Khojalu Events Discussion.., the truth yet again, for those who subscribe to government media Options

[Hosank]

[March 12, 2007]

See also: Khojaly: The Moment of Truth

The assertions that for several successive days the Karabakh forces had warned the civilian population of Khojaly to leave and had provided a corridor to this end have been confirmed by Azerbaijani sources as well.

Khojaly resident Salman Abbasov consequently complained, “A few days before those tragic events the Armenians had warned us many times over the radio that they were planning to seize the city and urged us to leave it. For a long time helicopters had been flying into Khojaly and it was not clear if anyone was concerned about our fate. Virtually, we had not received any help. Moreover, when there was a chance to evacuate the women, children, and the elderly, we were being persuaded not to leave.”

In the early spring of 2005 Azerbaijani reporter Eynulla Fatulayev visited Khojaly. After returning to Baku he wrote in an article entitled “They had time to help the cattle but not the humans,” “A few years ago I met with refugees from Khojaly temporarily sheltered in Naftalan. They openly acknowledged that for a few days before the attack Armenians had continuously warned the population over loudspeakers about the imminent operation and asked civilians to leave the encircled city through a humanitarian corridor along the Karkar River. According to refugees from Khojaly, they used the corridor and the Armenian soldiers on the far bank didn't open fire on them. Some soldiers from the detachments of the Popular Front had for unknown reasons evacuated some of the Khojaly residents toward Nakhichevanik, which was under control of the Askeran Armenian regiment.”

With the help of the local administration of Askeran, the reporter familiarized himself with the locality, walking through the areas that Khojaly residents had passed through. “After familiarizing myself with the geography of the area I can say for sure that the assumptions about the absence of a corridor are groundless. There was, in fact, a corridor, otherwise the residents of Khojaly, completely encircled and cut from the outside world, could not have broken through the circle and gotten out. For unknown reasons some of the Khojaly residents were directed toward Nakhichevanik. It looks like the detachments of the Popular Front aimed not at rescuing the residents of Khojaly but at bloodshed on the path to dethroning Mutalibov,” Fatulayev wrote.

During an interview with Azerbaijani president Ayaz Mutalibov one month after the Khojaly tragedy, Czech reporter Dana Mazalova put the following question to him: “What would you say about the Khojaly events, after which you resigned? At the time, corpses of people from Khojaly were discovered not far from Aghdam. Some one had shot them in the legs beforehand to prevent them from running away. Afterwards they were axed. On February 29 th my colleagues filmed them. When we next filmed on March 2 nd these corpses had been scalped. What kind of strange game was that?” Mutalibov then said, “As the rescued residents of Khojaly say, all that was organized to create grounds for my resignation. I don't think that the Armenians, who had manifested a clear and knowledgeable approach to such situations, would have allowed Azerbaijanis to obtain evidence that tied them to fascist acts.”

“If I declare that it was the fault of the Azerbaijani opposition I could be blamed for slander. But the overall picture of the conclusions is as follows: the Armenians had, in any case, provided a corridor to let the civilians escape. Why then would they shoot? Moreover, in the vicinity of Aghdam where at the time there was sufficient force present to assist people? Or they could have just agreed that the civilians leave… The Aghdam detachment was located nearby and was obliged to seriously follow the development of events. As soon as Khojaly was surrounded by tanks it was necessary to immediately lead the civilians out. Earlier I had given similar orders regarding Shushi – to evacuate women and children and to leave only men in the city. It's one of the laws of war – civilians must be rescued. My conduct was appropriate and unambiguous – I gave such orders, but why they weren't followed in Khojaly is not clear to me,” Mutalibov said.

In succeeding years as well Mutalibov continued to insist, with some corrections, that Armenians had left a corridor for the civilian population to leave.

“In the evening of February 25 th the late Minister of the Interior Tofik Kerimov reported to me on what had happened, but without details. He said that several hundred people had been shot in Khojaly itself. The first thing I did at the time was to telephone the leader of Nagorno Karabakh, a certain Mkrtchyan. I didn't know him, had never seen him but I knew his name. I asked him angrily how it was possible to shoot nearly a thousand civilians in Khojaly. He responded word-for-word as follows: ‘It's nonsense! We didn't shoot anyone in Khojaly. When we took Khojaly, the residents had already left, since we had opened a corridor for them. Some of the residents are still there; they are staying in the building of the vocational school. We feed them, though we too have a shortage of food.' I didn't believe him and asked him to call Armen Isagulov, who was the head of the police department at the time, to the phone. He too told me that they had provided a corridor for the residents. That is why when I gave an interview then I said that I was told that a corridor had been opened for the civilian population. But I didn't assert whether the corridor had in fact been provided or not. I just appealed to the fact of the telephone conversation… By the way, it is written in black and white in the report by the Memorial Human Rights Center that Elman Mamedov had been personally informed of the provision of the corridor,” Mutalibov said later on.

A few days after the tragedy, Khojaly Mayor Elman Mamedov acknowledged, “We knew that the corridor had been provided for the civilian population to leave.”

News of the Khojaly tragedy reached Baku in the evening of February 25, 1992 – that is, before the Karabakh forces started the military operations. Neither Minister of the Interior Kerimov nor Minister of National Security Huseinov was able to identify the source of that disinformation. And on the morning of February 26, Ayaz Mutalibov telephoned the Speaker of the Nagorno Karabakh parliament, Artur Mkrtchyan, and the head of the police department, Armen Isagulov, to find out what had really happened.

On the evening of February 26, realizing that the loss of Khojaly would mean the defeat of Mutalibov, the Ministry of the Interior of Azerbaijan released a statement saying that “the attack by the Armenian guerilla in the direction of Khojaly has been repulsed and the Azerbaijani forces have regained the control of the city.” But this information was immediately refuted by the information center of the Popular Front, which announced that that “two trucks full of bodies of slain residents of Khojaly have arrived to Aghdam.”

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British journalist Thomas de Vaal believes that the Khojaly attack began on the night of February 26 - in commemoration of the anti-Armenian pogroms in Sumgait that had taken place four years earlier in February 1988. “The 366 th regiment of the Soviet Army supported the Armenians with armoured equipment. They surrounded Khojaly on three sides, after which the Armenian soldiers entered the city and suppressed the resistance of the local defenders,” de Vaal wrote.

There seem to be some inaccuracies here. First, would it have been logical for the Karabakh forces to seize Khojaly in the days of remembrance of the Sumgait massacre? Besides, the Sumgait events took place on February 27 and 28, so according to the logic of “taking revenge” the Karabakh forces should have started the attack on Khojaly on the night of February 27. The capture of Khojaly was of invaluable significance for the Karabakh forces and today, years after the cessation of military operations, assumptions regarding the approximate coincidence of certain dates are beside the point. After all, Khojaly and the whole Karabakh conflict was a ruthless war in the harshest sense, and who would have been thinking about historical parallels?

Furthermore, both Azerbaijani and Armenian sources insist that the Karabakh forces had been planning the Khojaly attack for an earlier date but for some reasons had postponed it.

In mid-February on the eve of his visit to Iran, Ayaz Mutalibov ordered the Shushi commandant, Rahim Ghaziyev, to maintain a truce in his absence and not to fire in the direction of Stepanakert. But within hours after his departure to Iran, a fierce bombardment of Stepanakert and, in particular, the 366 th motorized regiment began. In response, the Karabakh forces attacked Khojaly. The exchange of fire lasted for a few days – from February 14 to February 16.

“Shells rained down on us from Stepanakert. It was a nightmare. I gave the order to open fire on Stepanakert from the Grad missile system. Our soldiers could not fire accurately using the coordinates. Four of the Grad barrels were out of order. One of our soldiers climbed up the [Shushi] tower and was telling us whether the shells had fallen on the military camp or not. Suddenly he shouted that several shells had hit the camp. Five of the regiment's armored vehicles were destroyed,” Ghaziyev recalled.

According to Ghaziyev, there was only one Grad system in Shushi at the time that could be used during positional battles. “On February 16 we received information about preparations for an attack on Khojaly. Our forces stationed in Shushi successfully prevented the attack with the help of this very Grad system, which we used to bombard the enemy positions. On February 25 we again received information about another attempt to attack Khojaly. I assure you we didn't have enough ammunition to assist the Khojaly residents and to stop the Armenian attack. We didn't use the Grad system at that time since a thick fog had floated over Shushi… On one of those days I telephoned Mutalibov and informed him of the danger threatening Khojaly. The president said that the minister of the interior, Tofik Kerimov, had assured him that the situation was stable. I realize that a trap was set for Mutalibov in Khojaly. But it's not true that I opened fire on Stepanakert contrary to the president's orders.”

Before Khojaly the Karabakh forces had already had the experience of successful military operations in several other locations. The head of the standing committee on foreign relations of the Nagorno Karabakh parliament, Levon Melik-Shahnazarov, wrote that military successes in Togh and Sarinshen had been followed by victories in Lesnui (Meshali), Malibeylii, and Ashaghi Ghushchular (these operations were planned by Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan; the commander in charge was Valery Babayan) and that heavy fighting had resulted in the liberation of the Stepanakert suburb of Krkzhan.

“It's hard to overestimate the significance of Khojaly for both the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis. Khojaly separated the south of Karabakh from the north. Nagorno Karabakh's only airport was located in Khojaly and for the blockaded Artsakh Armenians, it was the sole link to the outside world. And finally, Khojaly was also used for bombarding Stepanakert and other Armenian settlements,” Melik-Shahnazaryan wrote.

The Khojaly operation was planned and headed by the commander of the Karabakh Forces, Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan, known as Commandos. The Karabakh military units were supposed to enter Khojaly from four directions: first from Mehtishen, second from Noragyugh, third from Katuk and fourth from the vicinity of the airport. A corridor for the civilians and the retreating Azerbaijani soldiers was left along the Karkar River.

“Besides, some weeks before the attack the Karabakh side had repeatedly warned Baku and the residents of Khojaly that the city would be attacked. The Karabakh forces employed such tactics throughout the course of the entire war. This had a dual purpose. First, to spread panic among the residents and to make the civilians leave before the military operations began and, second, the absence of the civilian population demoralizes the army, its desire to fight withers and the soldiers think above all about not getting killed and, if possible, running away. Under such circumstances, as the subsequent military operations showed, the Karabakh side suffered unbelievably fewer losses,” Melik-Shahnazaryan wrote.

The Khojaly operation began at 11:00 p.m. on February 25, that is, a few hours after Mutalibov was informed about the massacre of the civilian population of Khojaly. Some two and a half hours later it had become clear from the exchange of radio messages by Azerbaijani radio operators that the military were abandoning the city along with the civilians. Only one unit fortified its position in a five-story building and put up resistance, but by 4:00 a.m. on February 26 some of them had been destroyed and others had surrendered.

Was it possible that reinforcements could have been brought up to Khojaly from Aghdam, which was, at the time, controlled by military units of the Popular Front? In fact, Khojaly was surrounded on four sides and from the military standpoint its defense was vulnerable. The contacts between Khojaly and other settlements in Azerbaijan and Aghdam, in particular, were maintained by means of helicopters. The last flight to Khojaly before the Karabakh forces captured the city took place on February 13. According to various estimates, about 3,000 residents remained in Khojaly as of February 25 and the commander of the airport emergency platoon with its 160 soldiers, Arif Hajiyev, was in charge of the defense of the city.

On the other hand, it is impossible to understand why the civilian population was not withdrawn when the downfall of Khojaly all too obvious to the Azerbaijani side. One of the reasons for this was, perhaps, the internal troubled situation in Azerbaijan. There was no unified military command, although the Azerbaijani forces concentrated in Aghdam could have rendered assistance to the Khojaly defenders. The following is an extract from an interview with Rahim Ghaziyev:

“Why was no assistance was rendered to Khojaly residents in time?”

“As of February 25, there were 12 T-72 tanks, 12 armored vehicles, 4 Grad missile launchers, 40 cannons and 2,500 soldiers in Aghdam. All this could have been directed at the Khojaly defense but no assistance was rendered.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know. It was enough to open fire from the Grad system. There was a sniper – Private Inchipirenko. He could have hit any target. Can you imagine that? But it turned out that the Grad system disappeared.”

“If I'm not mistaken, Tamerlan Garayev and Fahmin Hajiyev were in Aghdam at the time…”

“Yes. And Tair Aliyev was the commander in charge of the entire Karabakh front. You say that I was appointed the Shushi military commandant. But I learned about that decree from a TV programs. I had no documents, not a stamp, nor any normative act.”

During the Khojaly operation the minister of defense of Azerbaijan was Tair Aliyev, who had held this position for a very short period of time. In fact, over the course of six months in 1991-1992 there were four ministers of defense in Azerbaijan, which, in itself, is nonsense for a warring state. The first defense minister was Soviet Army General Valeh Barshadly. Soon after he was replaced by Tajeddin Mehtiyev, who was forced to resign after the defeat in Karintak. Mehtiyev was replaced by Tair Aliyev. On March 17, after the Khojaly operation and the resignation of President Mutalibov, Rasim Ghaziyev was appointed defense minister.

“After the capture of Khojaly, our troops found 11 bodies of civilian residents, not counting, of course, the losses among the Azerbaijani military. Another several hundred civilians - more precisely 734 people – some of whom were Meskheti Turks, were brought to Stepanakert. By February 28 all the captive Khojaly residents had been handed over to the Azerbaijani side,” Melik-Shahnazaryan wrote.

The Meskheti Turks had been resettled in Khojaly since 1989. Azerbaijan had gradually resettled about one thousand Meskheti Turks expelled from Uzbekistan in Khojaly, thus artificially increasing the population of the town. If in 1989 there were about 1,600 residents in Khojaly, in 1991 this number had reached 6,300, and that year Khojaly was given a status of a town. Political analyst David Babayan says that according to the 1926 census Khojaly was a completely Armenian village with 888 residents.

“In the 1950s Azerbaijanis began settling in Khojaly and by the early 1960s an Azerbaijani village of Khojaly had emerged next to the Armenian one. By 1977, no one talked about the Armenian Khojaly anymore. By 1989 Khojaly was already a completely Azerbaijani village with 1,661 Azerbaijani residents,” Babayan said.

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The Fraud of Kojali, from the president of that time.

Interview of Ayaz Mutalibov(ex-president) gave to the Czech journalist Dana Mazalova, published in the Nizavisimaya Gazeta of April 2, 1992


Dana Mazalova:

“What are your thoughts about the incident in Khodjalu, which was followed by your resignation? Corpses from the fighting in Khodjalu have been found not far from Aghdam. It appears that these people were initially shot in the foot to prevent them to move further, after which they were hit with axes. On February 19, my colleagues had filmed these corpses. On March 2, the same corpses were shown scalped. It seems like weird games.”


Ayaz Mutalibov

“Those residents who survived the Khodjalu incidents have stated that whatever happened there was orchestrated only to create the scenario for my resignation. There were certain elements working the overthrow of the President. I highly doubt that the Armenians would provide revealing documents to the Azerbaijanis. I can only assume that certain people were interested in using those pictures at the plenary session of the Azerbaijani Supreme Council to place the focus of the attention on my person.”


Now, before continuing on that, lets post what the Azeris government has decided to do with the Armenians.

"One option is quite definitely not open; namely, any attempt to declare Nagorno Karabakh to be part of Azerbaijan. That would be to reward those who indulged in aggression and invasion of a neighboring independent state, as well as to cause gross violations of human rights in total defiance of treaty obligations . . . We should remember the statement made by President Elchibey in June 1992, when, after opening full hostilities against Karabakh, he said that if there were any Armenians left in Karabakh by October they could hang him in the central square of Baku. It is a pity they did not! No amount of oil-lubricated waffle or diplomatic flannel in the West can excuse this clear statement of intent by a head of state. It has the underlying unequivocal ring of statements made by Genghis Khan, and we all know what his intentions were."

House of Lords Hansard, 28 October 1993, cols. 966-967

Shadman Huseynov, said about the president.


A rebel spokesman in Gyandzha, Shadman Huseynov, flatly denied this in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

"All he wants is to clear Azerbaijan of Armenians," Huseynov said.

But the spokesman added that after the crisis, "If the people want him, then they could vote for him in a referendum." Associated Press 20 June. 93


About Khojali.

On February 26, the Azerbaijani Interior Ministry released their casualty figures concerning Xojali, 100 dead and 250 wounded (COVCAS Bulletin, March 5, 1992), including the OMON’s(Azeris gorillas), when Azerbaijani government reported to the media’s around the world that 1000 civilians have been exterminated. There has been no investigation; the Azerbaijani government refused any possible investigations. They also hide the fact that Xojali was used as bases for GRAD rocket launchers.

Armenians before attacking Xojali gave an ultimatum for their entrance in the city, after that dozens of GRAD’s were been fired from the city to Armenian civilian zone destroying a hospital.

Helsinki Watch in Baku on April 28, 1992 interviewed Azeri’s civilians, that recognised of having been told by Alif Gajiev (the head of the Azeris OMON in Khodjaly) : "They (the Armenians) made an ultimatum.. . that the Khodjaly people had better leave with a white flag. Alif Gajiev told us this on February 15. but this didn't frighten me or other people. We never believed they could occupy Khodjaly." (Helsinki Watch, p. 20) . They decided to not leave the city, when OMON peoples were hiding in Civilian areas. Another report from Helsinki Watch: "All Azerbaijanis interviewed who were in this group reported that the militia, still in uniform, and some still carrying their guns, were interspersed with the masses of civilians." (Helsinki Watch, p. 21) Another thing is that COVCAS Bulletin, April 9, 1992, on page 4 reported the ex-President of Azerbaijan, Ayaz Mutalibov speech on April 1992 that the massacre of Xojali was done by his political opponents to force his resignation.

What about the massacre of Armenians in Maragha village? Contrary to Xojali that was uses as military bases and attacks by militia’s, Maragha was just a simple villages, where CSI mission to Nagorno Karabakh in April before Xojali incident investigated, where there was 45 corps of women, children’s and elderly, and that there was at least 100 missing. Or Sumgait massacre were hundreds died, and Azerbaijani government refused to lets any international investigators in, openly saying that there should be no Armenians left in Azerbaijan. At this time there was no Armenian troops there, what about Kirovabad? On November 21, 1988 the 40,000 of the Armenians have been deported and uncounted numbers killed, when without Russian entrance to stop the conflict, all the Armenians from Azerbaijan were about to be deported and killed.

In November 18, 1988 an Azeri-Turk was sentenced to death in Moscow for his role in the Sumgait massacre. Just the next day a mass demonstration of Azeris in Baku took place, 500,000 peoples, screaming the slogan “Death to Armenians” and “Armenians out of Azerbaijan” When Armenians were leaving by thousands.

Even Azeris eyewitnesses were admitting this. Azaddin Gyulmamed report : "We went to see what was happening. We saw these guys in the streets. I don't know who they were drug addicts, maybe. They had sticks and clubs, and lists of Armenians and where they lived. They wanted to break down the doors of Armenian apartments and chase them out. The police didn't do anything. They just stood and watched. Same with the soldiers, who had weapons. We asked them to help. There were about a dozen soldiers and ten of us, and there were about twenty in the gang, but the soldiers wouldn't help. They said: 'You can do it yourself, Blackie. We're not getting involved." Recorded by the Reporter Robert Cullen.

All this continue when villages in the Shaumyan region were emptied of their Armenian population. Armenian villages of Kirov (Bertadzor district) and Dolanlar (Gadrut district), were repopulated by Azerbaijani’s, when Armenian homes were distributed to them.




Goltz lies.

Goltz and his Turkish wife Dr. Hikran Goltz, are in an active propaganda war against the Armenians... also Goltz was one of the initiators of the news that more then a thousand Azeris have been killed in Xojali, with the Turkish correspondent Elif Kaban of the Reuters, and the photographers such as Oleg Litvin, Dunn Fatali, Mirnaib Hasan etc...

The ironic about this, is that Goltz having knowledge of the event, since he covered the deaths in Xojali, should have pointed out when the photographers that were with him photographing the pictures that were not mutilated 2 days before... what this mean, is that Goltz implication on lying should cost his job as a said journalist, since he was aware that the pictures that were taken were manipulated by the Azeris themselves. T. Mazalova from Czechoslovakia, like pointed out above, that was one of the correspondent there, was watching the tapes recorded of the deaths, one filmed on February 29 and the other on March 2, realized that in the first series of pictures the bodies were not mutilated, and on the second they were, when Goltz group of photographs took pictures from February to March 2, and being so, he would be one of the first to know that these pictures were build up scenes of mutilated bodies, that he Goltz was the one propagating to the World that more then a thousand of Azeris civilians were killed by Armenian forces. When Azerbaijani Interior Ministry released figures at first was of 100 casualties, later Helsinki Watch, published a list of the casualties(total number 181) based on a list provided by the Azerbaijani parliament, from 100 as official numbers they increased to 181... And what was the numbers submitted to the World? It was submitted by Goltz group, first to the Washington Post, he presented first a number(source ? practically nowhere to be found, he say having taken it from Imam Sadikov, that number later has been multiplied to 700, 1000 and even 1500) 477, then the medias, then it was presented to the London Sunday Times also pressed by him etc... From 100 as the official number to more than a thousand, now it is a question of between 600 to 700 by the Azeris side.

Armenians have used the Soviet constitutional law to annex the autonomous Oblask of Karabagh, that was only an Azeris protectorate, and not as an integral part of it. The Armenians used legal means under Soviet constitution, after that the Karabagh Armenians reported to the Azeris government in various occasions to stop the unjust treatments that they were facing for decades, when lately Azeris fanatics in 1988 entered in there, beating Armenians, this was presented at the Azeris Soviet council, and ignored.

Xojali has been proven to be a political tool by Turkey in order to turn the public opinion from the recognition of the Armenian genocide. Even the Turkish republic refuses to call the Xojali event genocide, or a premeditated killing, because they know that in Azerbaijan there is dozens of such events that happened against the Armenians, that will be turned against them, I have named few of them here.

700,000 Azeris refugees, the number of more then a million is found by the addition of the refugees from both sides, there as well as 350,000 Armenian refugees that are ignored by the Azeris side, preferring to use the total number of refugees(which include the Armenians), and present them as all being Azeris.