He made the remarks during a presentation of the book titled “Genocide of 1918 against the Azerbaijani people”.
According to Valiyev, the Azerbaijani authorities at that time were aware of the impending Khojaly genocide.
“These events started in November of 1991 and continued intensively. They went on in various districts of Karabakh,” said Veliyev adding that though they did not have the scale as Khojaly, but dozens of people died, hundreds were wounded.
Some 67 people were killed on February 16-17 in Garadaghli, the military prosecutor recalled.
“A week later, a massacre was committed in Khojaly with a population of about 7,000. However, when the events took place, there were not so many people. To realize the reason, one doesn’t need to be a scientist. The Azerbaijani authorities were no doubt aware of it, but did nothing to prevent it. Even after the events, it was necessary at least to evacuate the people from there,” he added.
At that time, Azerbaijani Interior Ministry spread information that only two people died during this tragedy, and later the state had to make considerable efforts to prove that 613 people were killed during this tragedy, he said.
The military prosecutor went on to add that the Justice for Khojaly campaign, initiated by Leyla Aliyeva, Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, played a great role in bringing to the world community the truth about the Khojaly genocide. “After this campaign was launched, a number of countries recognized the Khojaly tragedy as genocide.
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