Armenian Authorities Drop Arrest Warrant for Azerbaijani Man Who Beheaded Elderly Artsakh Resident
YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Armenian law-enforcement authorities have confirmed that they have withdrawn an international arrest warrant for an Azerbaijani man accused by them of beheading a Nagorno-Karabakh civilian during the 2020 war.
The man, Kamil Zeynalli, was detained by Russian police at Moscow’s Domodedovo international airport in February 2024 due to that warrant. He was freed and flown back to Baku several hours later after an intervention from the Azerbaijani Embassy in Russia.
Armenian Interior Ministry said at the time that Zeynalli is wanted for the beheading of an elderly resident of Karabakh’s southern Hadrut district captured by Azerbaijani forces during the six-week war.
Zeynalli, who is known as a fitness coach, boasted earlier this week that the international search for him launched by “our enemies” has been rescinded “thanks to the efforts of our state.”
The Interior Ministry and the Office of the Prosecutor-General in Yerevan essentially confirmed that in identical statements issued late on Wednesday. They said Armenia and Azerbaijan last year reaffirmed a 2007 “understanding” to cease or not launch international searches for citizens of each other’s countries valid in other ex-Soviet states, including Russia.
The statements did not explain why Zeynalli had been put on Armenia’s wanted list despite that agreement, which has never been publicized or reported before.
“Not only am I unaware [of it,] but our public is probably hearing about the existence of such a legal document for the first time,” Ara Ghazaryan, an Armenian expert on international law, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Thursday.
Ghazaryan argued that under Armenian law, an agreement or legal act can come into force only after its publication. He also said that arrest warrants issued for alleged war crimes cannot be invalidated by any Armenian-Azerbaijani deal.
News of Zeynalli’s effective removal from the Armenian wanted list emerged less than a month after the Armenian government agreed to withdraw lawsuits filed against Azerbaijan since the 2020 war. The government announced plans to do so after accepting Azerbaijan’s proposals regarding the remaining disagreements on the text of a draft Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. The finalized treaty commits the two sides to dropping cases brought against each other in various international tribunals.
Yerevan’s concession to Baku was denounced by Armenian opposition figures and human rights campaigners as well as exiled activists from Karabakh. They said it is part of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s desperate efforts to reach the still unpublicized peace deal.
Despite this and other Armenian concessions, Baku has made clear that it will not sign the deal unless Yerevan meets further Azerbaijani demands. Those include a change of Armenia’s constitution.
