PART 1

Go find Mejidov, Ganifaev, Muslimzade, Bairamova and others

Azerbaijani public figures who are engaged in Sumgait falsifications now, are keen on referring to one of the victims in the case with Grigoryan’s involvement. This woman is Lyudmila M, whose entire family severely suffered as a result of pogroms, while she was saved by a miracle. In her testimony she indeed recognizes Grigoryan and accuses him of rape, humiliation and plunder – in the same way as she accuses the others.

However, the Ordinary Genocide project possesses a video recording of the confrontation with the participation of Lyudmila M. conducted by the investigation group. In this video recording she recognizes the man who was the first to rape her on that horrible day. The suspect also confesses having done this – all this can be seen in the archival materials of the proceedings.

What is most noteworthy is that the prosecutor calls this man by the name – Mejidov Mail Ismail-ogli. This name is however not in the list of the convicts in the case of Lyudmila M. So here is a question to General Yusubov – why not announce a search for Mejidov M. I. in the framework of the resumed investigation on Sumgait? After all he was pleaded guilty as a result of the investigation, but for some reasons he avoided punishment.

Another reason for resuming the Sumgait case and for searching the perpetrators is provided in the testimony by convicted Turabiev in the court in relation to court proceedings on another criminal case which accuses Mehdiev, Rzaev and Turabiev in the murder of the Avanesyan brothers and in other crimes (the verdict).

Turabiev states, “Near Mezhlumyan’s place I saw policemen. They were provoking the people to make pogrom in Mezhlumyans’ apartment. There were about 20 of them there. One of them had the rank of the Major; he approached people and asked, “Why are you standing doing nothing? You too go ahead, destroy and plunder”.

Question to Mr. Yusubov: Why isn’t there a search for the policemen, not only for those who were not doing their job during the pogroms, but also for those encouraging others to commit crimes against the Armenians? Were the Sumgait police, as well as other local bodies also acting according to the orders of Grigoryan and other “Armenian extremists”?

Or, was it that the Sumgait police and the Prosecutor’s Office with all its employees, as well as all the other officers of law enforcement bodies of Baku and Azerbaijan from top to down were employees of the USSR KGB and were carrying out orders of one Armenian man – Grigoryan? In that case where was the administration of the Azerbaijani Committee of State Security (so cherished by KGB General HeydarAliyev) looking at? How could they have allowed such a humiliating state of affairs for the Azerbaijani state? And where is the current Azerbaijani leadership looking at, headed by his son Ilham Aliyev who is promoting such a shameful version of events for his state and for his people?

In the court case that was taking place in Moscow there were only three suspects. The materials of this criminal case and the indictment (in Russian) of which can be found on Karabakhrecords.info website) come to prove that on 29 February in the assault of only one (the 41st) quarter of Sumgait 400 people were taking part. 7 Armenians were brutally murdered (5 of them were Melkumyan family members), many apartments were plundered and other cruel crimes were committed. All this, according to the indictment, was carried out only by three hooligans, one of which was almost a teenager… while the Sumgait police were unable to stop them.

Does this even make any sense?

Well Mr. Yusubov, go and search for other executioners of Sumgait, including the policemen!

One more reason for the modern Baku investigators to work hard on are the statements made by two witnesses on one and the same case (heard in the Supreme Court of Moscow) – they are the master of Housing Department 12 of Sumgait T. Tahmazov and the head of the same Housing Department V. Mamedov. Both witnesses testified in the court that according to the orders of the representative of the Azerbaijani Central Committee of the Communist Party in Sumgait Ganifaev, all the items that were thrown out of the plundered apartments of the Armenians were immediately taken to the city dump, set on fire and dug into the ground. This means that immediately a couple of hours after the crime was committed substantial evidence was destroyed by the representatives of the local self-governing bodies. Many Sumgait residents also have testified that the traces and the evidence of crime were immediately destroyed.

Another question to Yusubov: Where is Ganifaev now? Why isn’t he being searched for to find out what goal he pursued when giving such orders and who ordered him personally to cause such substantial obstacles for the investigation? Maybe Ganifaev will show the investigators the desired road to the KGB?

One cannot but ask one more question: Why with the purpose of finding the organizers of the Sumgait pogrom no one is searching for then Sumgait authorities, for instance the First Secretary of the City Committee Jahangir Muslimzade? According to the testimony of many Sumgait residents he first made a speech at the rally on 27 February in which he called for “allowing the Armenians to go out of the city freely” and then he was seen with an Azerbaijani flag in his hands heading the bloodthirsty crowd.

Two hours after that street rally, pogroms and murders began in the city, but the name of one of those chiefly responsible for the situation was not included in any of the criminal cases. Likewise in none of these cases one can find the name of the Second Secretary of the City Committee Melek Bairamova, who took an active part in and made aggressive statements at the same street rally.

Moreover, there is verified information on that a day prior to the pogrom, on 26 February, Azerbaijan’s leadership arrived in Sumgait, among them the First Secretary of the Communist Party’s Central Committee (CC) Kyamran Bagirov, CC Secretary G. Hasanov and the head of the CC Department M. Asadov. On 26 February rallies were already being held in Sumgait where public incitements to murdering and deporting Armenians were already being voiced. With what purpose did the Azerbaijan’s high-ranking authorities arrive to Sumgait, while immediately after their departure the genocide of the Armenian population began in the city? Why is none of them mentioned in the criminal cases as being responsible for mass murder in Baku’s satellite city and for the non-interference of state authorities?

If in Baku they really had the goal of revealing the truth about Sumgait, then they would by all means take up measures for getting answers to the questions related to these persons and facts. For instance they would have tried to identify the purpose of the visit of the three men or the reasons why as the result of investigation none of the state and city authorities was tried, or even called in as a witness.

But Yusubov is interested exclusively in one man with an Armenian surname.

That almighty Grigoryan

It must be noted that by trying to shift all the responsibility on Grigoryan, together with his brothers and “other Armenian extremists” (their names, with the exception of Georgian Phakadze, aren’t mentioned; while Eduard’s brother Ernest was detained and then set free by the investigators and his name was never afterwards mentioned in the court proceedings), the Azerbaijani side is setting up its own people. After all, claims that Sumgait pogrom was organized by an Armenian, or even by two Armenians and one Georgian, is a total slap on the face of their compatriots.

This means that hundreds of Azerbaijanis readily ran after a criminal Armenian, blindly following his orders to kill, torture, rape and burn civilians, while thousands of others, with the same readiness indulged themselves in watching these atrocities as bystanders… And only few of the Azerbaijanis of Sumgait were capable of showing empathy and tried to help the Armenians with whom they had lived as neighbours, worked and were friends for many years.

Moreover, according to the version of Baku, Grigoryan, being an ordinary criminal (even if we suppose that he might have been in any way related to the KGB) had unlimited influence on law-enforcing bodies of Sumgait and Baku, on medical institutions, which refused to send ambulance cars and help the dying Armenians (there are many eye-witness accounts on this), on those in charge of the city telephone network so that he could make them cut the telephone lines of the Armenians for several days. In that case Grigoryan must have also prepared lists with addresses of the Sumgait Armenians in the Housing Department (as it was testified by dozens of eye-witnesses), as well as manufactured cold weaponry in Sumgait factories, about which local newspapers also wrote. He must have also strictly ordered the leadership of the city of Sumgait and that of Azerbaijan for whole three days to disregard the events which were taking place less than 30 km away from capital Baku!

Yusubov is also claiming that the “then acting head of the police unit of Sumgait, Lieutenant-Colonel Khanlar Jafarov asked General Kraev to send to Sumgait troops which were located in Nasosni town”. He had supposedly answered, “Can’t you deal with a group of hooligans?” A question arises: Why wasn’t Lieutenant-Colonel Jafarov, together with his officers, taking up any measures? Were they afraid of a group of hooligans or were they following Grigoryan’s orders?

Thus, if we follow the Azerbaijani version of events, there can be only one conclusion: all the state organs, including the law-enforcement bodies and all the leadership of Soviet Azerbaijan were subjected to one single criminal with an Armenian surname and to the USSR KGB. Why in that case isn’t the Prosecutor-General’s Office looking for those who brought such a shame to the whole republic and to the whole nation, who, according to the actual assessment of Yusubov himself, made the Azerbaijanis look as “barbarians”?

It is true that there indeed were Azerbaijanis who saved their Armenian neighbours and friends. According to some testimonies, some of them even paid with their lives for that, as they were killed by their frenzied tribesmen. Sumgait Armenians always expressed their immense gratitude to those people. However in Azerbaijan they did not make heroes out of those who showed compassion for Armenians by helping them. Only those in Azerbaijan were made heroes who killed and tortured people solely because they were Armenians. Their photos, for instance that of Ahmedov, who was sentenced to death by court, appeared in rallies taking place in Baku several months later, in November 1988, while slogans such as “Hail the Sumgait heroes!” were heard. If we follow Yusubov’s and Mamedov’s logic, then it was the detained Grigoryan who from prison gave orders to heroize Sumgait executioners. This is absurd!

As it is known, the heroization of the murderers, which was a shameful and savage act for the whole civilized world, continued in Azerbaijan in the subsequent years too. For example, murderer Ramil Safarov, who axed a sleeping Armenia officer at night in Budapest in February 2004, was shortly thereafter officially proclaimed as a national hero and an example for the Azerbaijani youth. Are the Armenians and the special services of some unknown countries to be blamed for that too?

So who after all organized the Sumgait pogroms?

As it was mentioned above, one can agree with the newly emerged Baku investigators of Sumgait crimes only in one point – the initial investigation was biased and the perpetrators were left unpunished. Likewise, there is no doubt that both in Baku and in Moscow they did everything to cover up what had happened, to hide the true scale of the atrocity crimes and to limit the case to punishment of some of the perpetrators. Deputy Prosecutor-General Yusubov claims that “information about Sumgait events being organized by the special services of the USSR was received during the investigation which was carried out in 1989-1990”. A year earlier the same Yusubov voiced another interesting tale: “It has been revealed that these events were backed up by the Armenian lobby and other foreign special services”, – he announced.

Let’s leave aside the illiteracy of the Prosecutor-General, who fails to understand the difference between a lobby and special services. The imagination of the Azerbaijani propagandists isn’t even shocking anymore; it can only amuse the investigators who are used to relying solely on facts and on legal arguments. But here again some more questions arise. What exactly did Yusubov mean by “special services of foreign countries”? Who exactly according to Baku investigators was behind these pogroms – Armenian, Soviet or foreign special services? Or maybe they were all functioning in collaboration (which is hard to imagine in 1988)? Most importantly, what is it that prevents the Azerbaijani side from publishing the sensational information which served as basis for such conclusions?

However, the Baku investigators do not present a single fact that would support the version that the pogroms were organized by foreign special services or by Armenian extremists. This gives us all the grounds to conclude that such facts simply do not exist. At the same time the undeniable evidence showing that the Sumgait events were pre-planned and organized by the KGB of the Azerbaijan SSR, and that the whole process was controlled and coordinated by KGB officers does exist. This is supported not only by eyewitness accounts, most of whom testified seeing Volga automobile, inside which there were some people who from time to time would call up the leaders of the pogroms and were thereby coordinating the process. Neither is this version solely supported by the facts demonstrating that in the factories of Sumgait weapons were being manufactured or that there was no reaction from the capital Baku to what was going on for three days. There is more than that.

We have obtained archival video footage which shows the coordinating and directing role of the Azerbaijani special services during the Sumgait events. You can see these video shots in the Ordinary Genocide. Sumgait, February 1988 documentary. In these videos it is clearly seen and heard that some people give orders by radio in Russian and in Azerbaijani, using previously agreed signals by which they lead the crowd. The negotiations by the radio are conducted calmly and demonstrate professionalism; in that same calm and cynical manner they are filming the atrocities that are taking place. Who could in those days so confidently control the situation and film it at the same time? It is needless to explain.

As “evidence” that the Sumgait pogroms were carried out by the Armenian lobby and by the Soviet and foreign special services the Azerbaijani side has been writing that foreign TV channels were supposedly filming everything by video cameras and that afterwards these shots were immediately shown on TV, but they do not name any single TV station, while the archival video records demonstrate in the best way who exactly was filming the pogroms.

The organization that thoroughly planned and carried out the Sumgait scenario was Azerbaijani KGB which was for many years headed by “all-national leader” of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev. The article by George Soros published in 1989 in Russian journal Znamya points directly to the leadership and to special services of Azerbaijan. Soros namely writes, “The assumptions that the first Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan were instigated by the local mafia managed by the then first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the future President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev, are not far from the reality”.

Only the version that the pogroms were organized and exercised by the leadership and by special services of Azerbaijan gives exhaustive answers to all the outstanding questions on the Sumgait case, including the reasons for the inaction of the law-enforcement bodies. While a stunning similarity of methods and means used by the Sumgait executioners of the end of the 20th century with the executioners of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Turkey at the beginning of the 20th century provide all the grounds for believing that Sumgait was the first crime of genocide in terms of its timing, which came to prove that Azerbaijan continued the Turkish genocidal policies against the Armenian people.

Immediately after the Sumgait events a wave of anti-Armenian statements and pogroms was spread through almost all the localities of Azerbaijan. Ethnic cleansings, followed by massive rape and murders, continued for almost two years, up until the final straw – mass pogroms of the Armenians in January 1990 in the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku. These were carried out with no less cruelty and brutality but were of a larger scale compared to the Sumgait pogroms.

As for the role of the USSR KGB in Moscow, it also completely fits within the above-mentioned version. In that period the interests of Kremlin matched with the Turkish interests which pursued carrying out the Armenian Genocide at the beginning of the century – these policies were continued by the authorities of Soviet Azerbaijan. Both in Baku and in Moscow they aimed to scare the Karabakh Armenians and not to allow the initially exclusively peaceful, constitutional Karabakh Movement to evolve.

For that very reason for three days Gorbachev did not intervene and subsequently he cynically announced that the troops were late for three hours only. The troops entered Sumgait on 28 February, but they were carrying blank cartridges and were given orders not to intervene, so that the Azerbaijanis would have a chance to mutilate dozens of Armenians and to deport the whole Armenian community from Sumgait.

The common goals of Baku and Moscow were quite clear, “to scare the Karabakh Armenians by reminding them of the possibility of the repetition of the Genocide and to revive the process of ethnic cleansing of the Armenians from the region, which was interrupted at the beginning of the 20th century.

Where and for what purpose did the “Armenian trace” appear in the Sumgait case?

Let’s return to Eduard Grigoryan, whose participation in the Sumgait pogroms allows the Azerbaijani side to claim the existence of the “Armenian trace” in organizing the pogroms. Examination of the investigation records, together with the testimony of eye-witnesses, gives an answer to the question about the origin of this “trace.”

As it was mentioned above, in their accusations against Grigoryan they like in Baku to refer to the case of Lyudmila M., who suffered severely in the episodes in which this rascal was involved. At the same time they attribute to her, absolutely without any ground, statements which are absent from the case and from the court proceedings. However, the other evidence given by Lyudmila M., which became known in 1989, has been deliberately ignored. For the first time it was published in 1989 in famous pamphlet “Sumgait … Genocide … Publicity” and was subsequently cited in the other journals and publications.

Here is what she said in her testimony: “In the evening on February 27 several Azerbaijanis, who were in prison together with Grigoryan, came to visit him. They said, ‘Tomorrow we will attack the Armenians. We will be waiting for you near the bus station at 3 o’clock. He tried to refuse to join them. He then was told, ‘If you don’t come –we’ll kill you’. And Grigoryan went with them.”

The testimony of Lyudmila M., of course, in no way justifies Grigoryan. He is the same ruthless executioner of Sumgait, as the other hundreds involved in the case. However, this testimony demonstrates that the organizers were making all possible efforts to insure the involvement of a person with an Armenian surname, and thereby to create an “Armenian trace” in the Sumgait pogroms. This too, among other arguments, proves that “Sumgait” was a carefully planned, elaborated and controlled crime against the Armenian people with far-reaching objectives. Its masterminds and organizers tried to foresee absolutely everything, including the inevitable charges against Azerbaijan of committing genocide against Armenians in the Soviet era, similar to the charges brought against Turkey for committing the Armenian Genocide in 1915-1923.

27 years after the Sumgait, when this crime still remains uncovered and many questions remain unanswered (including the actual number of the victims), in Baku they still cling to the “Armenian trace” version, which was prudently prepared by their predecessors. It is easy to predict the goals and the subsequent steps of the Azerbaijani propagandists when the Armenian side goes on exposing further details of the case: they will try to find and request the extradition of Grigoryan, after which, resorting to well-known methods, they will try to make him confess that he, in collaboration with the USSR KGB, was the organizer of the Sumgait genocide.

They at the same time don’t notice that the chekists’(KGB) primitive propaganda ploy has long failed to meet its goals under the pressure of countless facts, legal arguments and testimonies of hundreds of witnesses; the card that seemed to be a trump card in 1988, has in the end turned out to be a totally losing card.

25.05.2015 Marina Grigoryan

Source: http://karabakhrecords.info/english_publication_articles_azerbaijans-kgb.html