QP MP Arpi Davoyan Does Not Exclude That The Return of Armenian Prisoners Could Take Up to 10 Years

The MP from the Civil Contract faction, Arpi Davoyan, addressed the issue of the return of Armenian prisoners held by Azerbaijan during a session of the National Assembly. Davoyan criticized the opposition's stance that there can be no peace as long as all prisoners have not been returned to Armenia.

"The opposition says that there can be no peace until all prisoners have been returned to their homeland. Have you even read and do you know when the prisoners returned to their countries after the end of World War II? That process took 10 years. Are you even aware of these processes?" said Davoyan.

He described the opposition's approach as a "petrified" mindset and compared the timeline of returning German and Japanese prisoners of war after World War II with the current situation. Simultaneously, according to published data, a significant portion of Allied prisoners of war, as well as civilians in German and Japanese captivity, returned home within the first two years after the end of the war, involving millions of people. The return took the most time in the cases of German and Japanese prisoners of war, lasting 10 years (Japan and Germany were the initiators of World War II - ed.).

In this context, Davoyan did not rule out that the issue of returning prisoners could be a prolonged process, noting that it took about 10 years for some German and Japanese prisoners of war to return.

It should be noted that there are still 19 Armenian prisoners held in Azerbaijan, and the issue of their return continues to be one of the crucial problems in Armenian-Azerbaijani relations.