Baku is preparing an international lawsuit against Russia over the AZAL plane crash
The Azerbaijani side is preparing documents to file a lawsuit against Russia in international courts. This was announced by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, according to the Minval publication. The lawsuit is related to the high-profile air crash that occurred in December last year.
“The President stated that the situation with the incident around the AZAL plane is clear as day. According to him, for seven months, Azerbaijan has not received a single clear response from the Russian side. The Prosecutor General of Azerbaijan sends requests to the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, but in response only the wording “the investigation is ongoing” comes,” the publication writes.
Aliyev emphasized that Russia’s position is counterproductive, recalling that the investigation into the crash of the Malaysian Boeing in the Donetsk region in 2014 lasted more than 10 years. At the same time, Baku, according to him, is also ready to wait as long as necessary.
Recall that on December 25 last year, the Azerbaijani passenger airliner Embraer 190, flying from Baku to Grozny, crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau. It is known that there were 67 people on board, of which 42 were citizens of Azerbaijan, 16 of Russia, 6 of Kazakhstan and 3 of Kyrgyzstan. 29 passengers survived.
The reasons for the plane crash have caused a lot of discussion, but the dominant version is that it came under fire from Russian air defense systems during an attack by Ukrainian drones on the territory of Chechnya. This is the opinion of the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, in connection with which he demanded that Russia admit guilt, punish the perpetrators and pay compensation.
On February 4, the Reuters news agency, citing sources in the Azerbaijani government, reported that Baku has evidence of the downing of the Embraer airliner by the Russian Pantsir air defense system, namely, a fragment of a missile. Soon after, it became known that the Azerbaijani authorities intended to file a lawsuit in an international court regarding the air crash.
