Questions About Khojaly

1. If the Armenian side was going to massacre the civilian population of Khojaly, then why did they warn the civilians to leave the town a few days before the offensive to capture the town?

2. Why did the authorities of Azerbaijan who knew about the Khojaly offensive, did not warn the people and evacuated only livestock in the area, but not the Meskhetian Turks who stayed and were left to their fate?

(For 1 and 2, the former mayor of Khojaly, Elman Mamedov, said that on February 25 at 8:30, he received a message through the radio that the Armenians were going to capture the town. He told everyone about it and requested the Azeri army to send helicopters to rescue the civilians, but assistance never came.)

3. Why was the exit corridor, the road to let the civilians leave, used at night only and not during the day?

4. Why were the victims killed in the immediate vicinity of Azerbaijani positions, where the Armenians never appeared?

5. Why would the Armenians go for a high risk intending to kill civilians in Khojaly and Agdam if they knew that a large group of Azeri soldiers (30-35 thousand soldiers) were deployed in that area at that time? (Between Stepanakert and Agdam with 35 thousand Azeri soldiers in front of Agdam.)

6. Why were civilians shot in territory controlled by Azeri forces?

7. After the Armenians took the town and provided a corridor for civilians to leave, why would they risk either the outcome of the operation or their lives to catch up with the civilians near Agdam and shoot them in territory under direct control of Azeri forces instead of staying in Khojaly and keeping it captured? (Khojaly’s strategic importance was to capture the town and destroy enemy artillery that was being used to bomb civilian targets in Stepanakert.)

8. Why were there more captured and returned people than dead? (Memorial Human Rights Center stated that by March 28, 1992, the Azerbaijani side received over 700 captive civilians from Khojaly on their way to Agdam.)

9. Why did witnesses and people who have a different point of view from the Azeri side were either killed like Chingiz Mustafaev, in prison like Eynulla Fatullaev or expelled from the country like Ayaz Mutalibov?

10. Why are photos and video footage of victims of the Kosovo and Balkan events, earthquakes, and refugees from other regions and events used to depict Khojaly victims and material illustrating "Armenian atrocity"?

11. Why, on the Azerbaijani video footage, the same bodies that are displayed in the normal state are mutilated a few days later? Who scalped them? (March 2-3, 1992)

How do you explain the Azeri video footage shows the bodies of the dead with signs of abuse (scalping, cutting off limbs/soft tissue). But before that Azeri video footage the same dead are revealed, but with no traces of abuse (the same corpses are not scalped and limbs/soft tissue are not cut off). It is obvious that between the first and subsequent shooting of the Azerbaijani operators someone abused the bodies of the victims. Who and for what purpose mutilated bodies of people?