AP covers former International Criminal Court prosecutor’s report: Armenians face Genocide in 2023

The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court warned that Azerbaijan is preparing genocide against ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and called for the U.N. Security Council to bring the matter before the international tribunal, Associated Press (AP) writes.

A report by Luis Moreno Ocampo issued Tuesday said Azerbaijan’s blockade of the only road leading from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh seriously impedes food, medical supplies and other essentials to the region of about 120,000 people.

“There is a reasonable basis to believe that a genocide is being committed,” Ocampo’s report said, noting that a U.N. convention defines genocide as including “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.”

A government representative in Azerbaijan dismissed the report from Ocampo, who was the ICC’s first prosecutor, saying it “contains unsubstantiated allegations and accusations.”

“It is biased and distorts the real situation on the ground and represents serious factual, legal and substantive errors,” Hikmet Hajiyev, an assistant to Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, told The Associated Press.

In Kornidzor, near the Azerbaijan border, a line of trucks loaded with some 360 tons of medicine and food supplies have been parked for two weeks waiting for permission to cross.

Vardan Sargsyan, a representative of a crisis management working group for Nagorno Karabakh set up by the Armenian government, told The Associated Press the Armenian government had asked for permission for the trucks to cross via Russian peacekeepers and provided details on their contents but so far received no response from Azerbaijan.

“Unfortunately, there have been many attempts from the Azerbaijani side to manipulate this situation,” he said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has also complained of being unable to bring aid shipments to NK during the blockade, although the organization was permitted to evacuate a limited number of patients to Armenia for medical care, AP writes.