3, 890 people have been registered as missing at the State Commission for Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing Persons of Azerbaijan. 3, 171 of them are servicemen, and 719 people are civilians. 71 children are on the list of the people who went missing or were taken hostage or were freed. During this period, 1, 480 people were set free from captivity.

One of the servicemen freed from the Armenian captivity is Zahid Hasanov. When Z. Hasanov was taken captive, he was 34 years old; one of his daughters was 5, and the other one was 2. The then 19-year-old famous sambo fighter, who had fought in Afghanistan, went to the frontline when the First Karabakh War began leaving behind his children, family. He cleared from the enemy his ancestral Fuzuli till Seyidahmadli village. Now, this village goes through the life of the former prisoner of war as a red line. There, he was taken captive and was set free. 

It is noteworthy that the only reason why the Armenian side took Azerbaijani citizens captive and hostage, kept them in jails under intolerable circumstances and subjected them to horrible tortures regardless of their age and gender was that they were Turks, Azerbaijanis. They used prisoners of war and hostages as slaves, forced them to work in specially dangerous production fields. The beating of prisoners of war and hostages by civilians at squares was a common case. They made our prisoners of war and hostages demolish the occupied human settlements, turned them into a subject of purchase. All these facts are reflected in the explanations and memories of the former captives and hostages. 

Zahid Hasanov was rescued 72 days after he was taken a prisoner of war - on May 17, 1994. According to him, an Armenian named Edik took him to Fuzuli's Seyidahmadli village, and after talking to an Azerbaijani named Seyid Ahad, he exchanged him for an Armenian prisoner of war called Vartan. His family paid 30, 000, 000 AZN to Alex Voskanyan in order to rescue him from slavery. Now, he carries the severe wounds on his body as a "keepsake" from those days. However, the fact that those, who subjected him to turture, were brought to justice and arrested in Baku, has slightly reduced his pain. 

In accordance with the official statistics, nowadays, 3, 890 Azerbaijani citizens are registered as prisoners of war and hostages. All of them are waiting for the day to be set free, to be rescued, even those who are no longer alive...

Aysham Rustamova