“The last time I saw my husband was the morning of September 19. He noticed that his phone was not in his pocket. He went out: we don’t know if he went to find his phone or to bring the cattle, but he left and didn’t come back,” Galya Babayan, 66, from Artsakh, recalled in an interview with Forrights.am the last contact she and her 71-year-old husband, Madat Babayan, had shortly after the Azerbaijani attack.
“There was shooting in the village; people started leaving the village.” The Babayans are from the village of Getavan, a settlement that was the first to fall under Azerbaijani control, as it is very close to the border. Under the fire, in the difficult situation that had arisen, the family began searching for the elderly man who had left the house.
“We went out to search, but the Russians wouldn’t let us, they said, ‘Go home, it’s dangerous.’ It was also dangerous at home, because our windows were breaking from shootings,” said Galya Babayan, noting that she wanted to tell the Russian peacekeepers that she was looking for her husband, but they didn’t listen to her.
Staying in Getavan has already become dangerous for people, as the enemy has started targeting residential buildings. The Babayans were forced to leave the village. “We went to a neighboring village in a Kamaz truck with the villagers. We left and didn’t see him,” she says and tells how, overcoming the uncertainty about her husband on the one hand and the difficulties of the road on the other, they managed to escape.
“We went half the way on foot, half by car, somehow. We walked all the way to Drmbon, walking 12 kilometers. When we got there, a boy came and said, ‘Get out; they’re coming.’ While we were walking, there were shootings all the time. They wanted to hit the bridge, to smash it, but they couldn’t.”
For about 20 days, the wife had no information about her husband. They were already in Armenia when Mrs. Galya received a call from an unknown number. It was an Azerbaijani number, calling from a Baku prison. At that time, it turned out that Madat Babayan was in captivity. As of now, he is in captivity for more than a year. He calls his wife regularly, doesn’t talk much, and doesn’t touch on problematic topics. “When these calls come, the caller’s phone number consists of only 8s. He says, ‘I’m fine, I wish you be fine.’ Once I wanted to call that number, but it didn’t go through. As soon as I see all 8s, I know it’s him.”
Mrs. Galya doesn’t believe her husband’s assurances that he’s fine. She says, “They’ve lived together for about 50 years, and she can tell from his voice that her husband is in a difficult situation.” “No, he’s not fine. I understand that he’s having difficulty speaking. He sounds as he is sick. Once he said, ‘My throat hurts,’ and once he said, ‘My teeth (dentures) are broken.'”
Madat Babayan is accused by Azerbaijan of the so-called “Khojalu genocide” in 1992. After his capture, the Azerbaijani security service released a video in which the elderly and defenseless Artsakh resident is handcuffed and surrounded by masked Azerbaijanis. In the propaganda video, Babayan, according to Baku, “shows the areas where he committed the genocide.” The family considers this a false accusation. The wife studied the footage of her husband in the video released by Azerbaijani law enforcement officers and noticed signs of violence. “I noticed that he has a bruise under his eye. I think my husband was beaten,” she said.
Narek Kirakosyan