Based on the evidences collected during the investigation of 37 criminal cases initiated by the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Armenia on the facts of a number of international crimes committed by the armed forces of Azerbaijan in the period from 12 to 22 July 2020, as well as the volume, nature, system, tactical and technical characteristics and locations of the used mortar-missile-artillery weapons of fire destruction, the degree of thoroughness of the analysis of the selected ground targets, the involvement of high-ranking military officials responsible for the development and conduct of the military operation, the number of personnel involved, the observance of the established procedure for this, the extent of ignoring the norms of international humanitarian law, the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Armenia has come to the conclusion that this is the result of in advance planned, thorough military, political and propaganda training, planned, organized and sanctioned directly by the highest political and military leaders of Azerbaijan.
In this regard, the Chairman of the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Armenia, Hayk Mkrtich Grigoryan, in order to attract the attention of the international community, published two scientific articles in Russian and English languages: “The military-political leadership of Azerbaijan are war criminals” (criminal-legal and criminal-procedural peculiarities of bringing to responsibility the representatives of military-political leadership of the Republic of Azerbaijan for committing war crimes); “The military-political leadership of Azerbaijan is an aggressor” (problems of bringing to responsibility the representatives of the military-political leadership of the Republic of Azerbaijan for committing aggression).
The articles analyze the mechanisms of bringing the military-political leadership of the Republic of Azerbaijan to criminal responsibility for the systematic commission of war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Law, the customary norms of international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court through the doctrine of "joint criminal acts", which is operated by the international criminal law, since the acts committed by this category of persons, as a rule, become the subject of investigation by international criminal justice bodies on the basis of definitions developed by international practice.
The actions of the armed forces of the Republic of Azerbaijan are projected onto the corps of previous sentences of various international criminal courts, such as the International Criminal Court, the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, etc. The process of international criminalization of the crime of aggression is analyzed, definition of aggression as a criminally punishable act of natural persons is compared, according to the Statute of the International Criminal Court, in accordance with the amendments made by the Assembly of States Parties to the Court in 2010, with the corpus delicti under Article 384 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia “Aggressive War”.
The correlation carried out by the author allows us to offer scientifically grounded recommendations on the qualification of acts that form the elements of the crime of aggression, including if it is accompanied by the commission of criminal violations of the laws and customs of warfare.
