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The media reported about 25 residents from Azerbaijan’s Gabala district wishing to cross the border and surrender to the Armenians but nothing was taken up against them, MP Gudrat Hasanguliyev said, according to Modern.az.

He said those people attempted to cross to the Armenian side as a protest against the unfair court rulings handed down to them. “The son of the man who attempted to transfer his wife and children to the enemy’s side was sentenced to one year in prison. Instead of appealing the decision in higher courts and raising the issue, he passes over to the enemy’s side. This should be addressed with legal procedures. Otherwise, everyone facing legal injustice will start putting the legal procedures aside and passing over to the Armenian side,” the MP said.
Therefore, according to Hasanguliyev, the runaways should be punished on charges of high treason under a due article of the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan. “The traitors should receive a condign punishment. Some concessions can be applied for women and children but the organisers of the case cannot be easily let go. Those people should face criminal liability,” he pointed out.

Ogtay Asadov, the speaker of Azerbaijan’s parliament, backed the MP’s idea that the law enforcement agencies of the country should give a legal assessment of those peoples’ actions.

On 27 February, about 25 residents of the village Ketuklu of Gabala district inhabited mainly with Lezgians tried to pass to the territory of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic in the direction of Aghdam with white flags in their hands. However, the police soon encircled and detained the runaways. One of the members of the group reportedly said the cause of the villagers’ protest was the unfair behaviour of the Nabiyev family, who hold key posts in the region.

Earlier, there were numerous reports about Azerbaijani civilians passing or attempting to pass the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and surrender themselves to Armenia or to the NKR.

On 23 January 2014, dozens of residents of Beylagan region, Azerbaijan, in protest against the demolition of their houses by the chief executive body tried to pass to the territory of Nagorno Karabakh Republic. On 29 January 2014, an Azerbaijani citizen Javid Orujov, resident of Baku born in 1976, appealed to the Armenian border guards on the Armenian-Georgian border, asking for a political asylum for him, his wife and their three young children. On 12 April 2014, Nazim Mammadov, a resident of Nakhijevan Autonomous Republic, was detained by the Azerbaijani military while attempting to cross the border with Armenia with a white flag in his hands. Earlier, in 2010, Nariman Agayev, from Goychay district, threatened to seek for asylum in Armenia because the investigator handed his daughter’s corpse to him only after getting a bribe of 1000 USD.