A court in Baku on July 28 sentenced two Armenians to 15-year-imprisonment on charge of espionage against Azerbaijan.
The defendants Davit Davtyan and Gevorg Sujyan were among Armenians who were deployed by Armenia on Azerbaijani territories in breach of the Karabakh peace deal that ended the hostilities.
They stood trial on charges of illegal weapon possession, espionage, formation of illegal armed group and illegal border crossing.
The prosecutor had earlier demanded that they be sentenced to 16 years in jail.
The two will be deported from Azerbaijan after serving their prison term.
According to the results of the investigation, Davtyan and Sujyan, illegally crossed into Azerbaijan in September 2020 from Armenia’s Goris region and collected information of a military nature and handed it over to Armenian special services.
The information handed over to the Armenian special services include data about the positions of the Azerbaijani army in the territories where military operations were conducted, about the number of military personnel, among others. The two men were detained by Azerbaijani servicemen on November 11 while walking along the Lachin corridor to Shusha.
On July 23, 13 members of an Armenian armed group were sentenced to six years in prison each on charges of border violation and illegal armed possession.
It should be noted that on June 12, Azerbaijan swapped 15 Armenian prisoners for a map detailing the location of landmines in formerly-occupied Aghdam city.
Another 15 Armenian soldiers were handed over on July 2 in exchange of maps of about 92,000 anti-tank and anti-personnel mines planted during the occupation in Fuzuli and Zangilan regions.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry described the return of the ex-convicts as a “humanistic step”.
Azerbaijan does not consider as POWs Armenian servicemen who violated the border after the signing of the November peace deal.
