Armenian side distorts facts, falsifies documents and uses other incriminating methods which it has used throughout its history-Fuad Alasgarov

The 24th anniversary of the Sumgayit events is drawing near. Last year Congressman Adam Schiff tried to raise the issue in the US Congress. This year a bill on an "Armenian genocide" in Sumgayit was even presented for consideration in the legislative body of the state of California. Do you think that there is a great threat of a bill on the so-called "Armenian genocide"?

The Armenian side has been referring to the Sumgayit events for many years in an attempt to justify its separatist and aggressive policy, the Khojaly genocide and other crimes committed in the territory of Azerbaijan.

Armenia, which has occupied 20% of the territory of our country and which conducted a policy of ethnic cleansing, presents the Sumgayit events as a deliberate act committed by Azerbaijan. This propaganda campaign, that started in 1988, aims to impose the idea of the cruelty of Azerbaijanis towards Armenians and the impossibility of coexistence with Azerbaijanis within the same state. In an attempt to pass off their lie as truth, the Armenian side distorts facts, falsifies documents and uses other incriminating methods which it has used throughout its history. Such fictional information is spread in the Internet and special websites are created to this end.

While earlier this activity was limited to propaganda, now work has started to move the issue of the "Armenian genocide in Sumgayit" to the legal plane. The deliberate policy of the Armenian diaspora, which is aimed at achieving the recognition of the fictional "Armenian genocide of 1915", at placing responsibility on Turkey and criminalizing any denial of the so-called "genocide" in foreign countries, for example, France, has started to show itself in interpretation of the Sumgayit events.

Recently Armenia has started to voice the opinion that the Sumgayit events were an act of "genocide", committed by Azerbaijanis against Armenians, and sets out this view in appeals to various international structures while the Armenian diaspora seeks to have the question discussed by the parliaments of foreign states.

Azerbaijan is closely watching the disinformation of the Armenian side and taking the necessary measures to prevent these actions. Work to achieve a just political and legal assessment of the Sumgayit events and to expose the fictional Armenian version is under way.

First of all, I would like to note the importance of the website Sumqait.org, created by the Presidential Administration of the Republic of Azerbaijan, which provides information in three languages. The website is designed to give the main reasons for the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, to expose the fictional Armenian version of the "Sumgayit genocide", to bring the truth about the Sumgayit events to the attention of the international community and to prevent Armenian attempts to shape a negative image of Azerbaijan in international public opinion. All the documents posted on the website prove that the Sumgayit events were propaganda prepared earlier by the Armenians.

We haven't stopped at creation of the website. Films are made, articles and books are published and translated into foreign languages and hard work is done at the international level to expose the Armenians.

Informing the international community not only about the Sumgayit events, but also about the Khojaly tragedy, the overall Karabakh conflict, its reasons and grave implications for our people, is one of the main conditions for the fair resolution of the conflict. The president of Azerbaijan, respected Ilham Aliyev, has stated repeatedly that Azerbaijan supports conflict resolution through talks on the basis of the norms of international law, within the framework of the territorial integrity of our country. However, the peace process will be effective only if the actions and decisions of the participants in the process are based on true information. In this connection, the mystification and ungrounded claims of the Armenian side further prevent the peace process and challenge its effectiveness.

So that the international community has an unbiased position on the issue, information must always be spread at international level through the use of modern information technology. In order to avoid the problem that Turkey is facing now we must move away from ad hoc tactics and adopt a preventive strategy in the information war. We must not act after the event, but foresee events. In the light of such challenges, only systematic political and legal measures, as well as consistent effective campaigning can ensure that deceitful Armenian projects do not achieve their goals in future.

Has a legal assessment of the Sumgayit events of 1988-1990 not been given?

It has already been proved that under the influence of the separatist ideas of the ideologists of Armenian nationalism - Shakhnazarov, Aganbekyan, Kaputikyan, Balayan - Mikhail Gorbachev provided support to Armenian separatists and nationalists while pursuing his own political goals at the same time. Gorbachev’s meeting with Silva Kaputikyan and Zori Balayan inspired all Armenian nationalists. Now they needed only a bloody provocation as "official grounds" for the fight for the separation of Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan. The Sumgayit pogroms became these "official grounds".

Unfortunately, the investigation and trials over the mass riots in Sumgayit in 1988-1990 did not give a legal assessment to the events. Those who ordered and organized the riots were not exposed or held accountable. On the contrary, the USSR Prosecutor’s Office, on the instruction of Mikhail Gorbachev, stopped at the version that these events were committed by hooligan elements and ensured that this was recorded as the official version.

Making use of the fact that the Sumgayit events received no objective political and legal assessment, Armenian separatists started the process of the forced separation of Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan. Immediately after the Sumgayit events, an information campaign against Azerbaijan started in Armenia, in the Soviet press and at the international level. This campaign has gone on consistently for 24 years now.

After the national leader of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev, came to power, all available means were used to prevent the Armenian campaigning tool and to bring to international attention the fact that the Sumgayit events were an Armenian provocation. As a result, we managed to destroy the negative image of Azerbaijan, imposed by the Armenians.

In order to prepare the legal basis for an appeal to international bodies to hold the real organizers of the crime accountable, the Prosecutor General’s Office, on the instruction of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, resumed investigation of the criminal cases of mass rioting in Sumgayit.

The investigative group questioned numerous witnesses and other people who knew about the Sumgayit events. They took testimonies from members of the investigation group of the USSR Prosecutor’s Office, sent requests to foreign countries, archive documents were made public, material in the media analysed and other necessary investigative measures taken.

What new facts were revealed by the investigation?

Information that the Sumgayit events were organized by the USSR intelligence was unearthed during the investigation in 1989-1990. However, this information was not checked by the investigative group of the USSR Prosecutor’s Office. On the contrary, the information exposing the organizers of the mass riots was concealed. The investigation was limited to holding accountable for their involvement in the riots only the people of Azerbaijani nationality, with the exception of Eduard Grigoryan. In other words, other Armenian provocateurs who took a direct part in the riots escaped responsibility.

The requests of the law-enforcement bodies of Azerbaijan received opaque responses that contained no information from Armenia and Moscow and there was no opportunity to investigate Grigoryan’s links to Armenian nationalists either. The main issues about who organized the pogroms and the backers of the Sumgayit provocation remain unanswered.

New facts prove that preparations for the riots started long before the events themselves. In anticipation of the Sumgayit events, suspicious persons of Armenian ethnicity arrived in Sumgayit and Baku and settled in hotels and in the flats of local Armenians.

These persons held numerous meetings with Armenians in Sumgayit, gave them instructions and disappeared immediately after the mass riots. Declassified archive material from the KGB made it clear that emissaries of the separatists of Nagorno-Karabakh, including USSR KGB agents Sargsyan, Osipov and others, actively participated in the Sumgayit events and afterwards were sent to the Central Asian republics. Traces of their work were found in the previous events in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. This is direct proof that the events in Sumgayit, Fargana, Osh and other parts of the former USSR were organized and regulated from the same centre.

The script for the mass riots in Sumgayit was played out by Grigoryan, his two brothers, Armenian emissaries who arrived on a special mission from Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, and by KGB agents. Material in the KGB archives shows that provocative actions in Sumgayit were undertaken by one Pkhakadze, a former activist of the separatist Karabakh committee and other activists of the nationalist Karabakh and Krunk organizations. It was no coincidence that Levon Saturyan, who later during the trial kept interfering in the process, giving instructions to Grigoryan, was an official from the KGB department on the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region.

Information obtained during the investigation about the persons who carried out the provocation and with whom Grigoryan was in contact earlier and on the days of the pogroms, later disappeared from the criminal case in unknown circumstances. In addition, information about a sabotage group of 20-25 people received by the operational and investigation group of the USSR General Prosecutor’s Office was not checked. According to the information, the sabotage group of 20-25 people who pretended to be Azerbaijanis deported from Kafan (a part of Armenia with a large Azerbaijani population) spread rumours about the atrocities against Azerbaijanis committed by Armenians in Armenia. Testimonies from the victims that their assailants included Armenians from Karabakh were not taken into account or investigated either.

The emissaries handed to Eduard Grigoryan the lists and exact whereabouts of Armenians who lived in Sumgayit and refused to join the separatist Karabakh and Krunk organizations and pay the membership fees. Armenians of mixed marriages who currently live in Sumgayit also confirm this. The declassified archive material also made it clear that none of the 47 Armenian nationalists whose names and addresses were revealed suffered during the pogroms in Sumgayit.

In order to raise the aggression of the crowd, the Armenian emissaries provided Grigoryan with psychotropic substances and alcohol to distribute among the pogrom participants. Grigoryan and his brothers also handed out knives to the pogrom participants.

There is further proof that what happened in Sumgayit was a provocation: most Armenians left the city in advance; in January and February 1988 Armenians rushed to take their money from the savings bank in Sumgayit. They also committed arson before leaving their homes in order to exaggerate the scale of the crimes committed in Sumgayit and further present them as committed by Azerbaijanis.

In addition, persons unknown, concentrated along the whole route of the pogrom participants, recorded the actions of the participants on video and passed the video to western channels. There is no doubt that those who recorded the material were informed about the plans for the pogrom in advance.

The investigation showed that of 32 people who died during the events six were Azerbaijanis. Unfortunately, the criminal case on the death of the Azerbaijanis was closed on 30 December 1988. Currently, the investigation of the criminal case has found that Baku resident and Armenian nationalist Valeriy Markaryan, after he brought Soviet soldiers to Sumgayit, killed four Azerbaijani civilians who were standing in the street. All the necessary investigative measures are being taken to give a legal assessment to this fact and settle the issue of responsibility.

To create the image that the Sumgayit events were committed by Azerbaijanis, the testimonies of witnesses were also falsified. Though most Azerbaijanis who participated in the meetings almost persuaded the participants not to carry out provocations, they were held accountable as "extremists". Meanwhile, during the investigation, Sumgayit Armenians repeatedly stated that they had been rescued by Azerbaijanis.

In the end, I want to note that the investigation is continuing, hard work is being done and I am confident that it will reveal all the perpetrators of the Sumgayit events.