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Nothing has changed in Azerbaijan's attitude towards Armenian prisoners of war (POWs) being held in Baku despite the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace talks, lawyer Siranush Sahakyan said on Friday.

Sahakyan, who heads the International and Comparative Law Center, claims Baku continues subjecting them to cruel and degrading treatment.

“The attitude has remained the same, the patterns in the previous reports have been repeated, especially the cases of brutal beatings in military police custody,” she told a news conference in Yerevan, adding Armenian POWs were also deprived of food and sleep.

"This policy of brutal beatings and terrorization continued under the supervision of the special services. The worst cases of inhuman treatment were recorded in detention facilities under the Ministry of Justice, where the superiority of Azerbaijanis against ethnic Armenians was emphasized through ethnic insults," she noted.

Sahakyan noted that the ill-treatment of persons detained in Azerbaijan after the 2020 war was accompanied by attacks against their families aimed at causing additional suffering to them.

"There was a case when a photo of a soldier with a cut throat was posted on his social media page. There were numerous cases when videos of war crimes and atrocities were sent to the killed servicemen's families and friends from their phones," she noted.

According to her, Azerbaijan keeps secret the fate of missing Armenian soldiers.

There were cases when Azerbaijani forces knew the exact location of the dead servicemen, but deliberately did not hand over the bodies to their families. Instead, they took pictures of them and shared on social media, the lawyer said.