Freedom of speech and press in Azerbaijan

Friday, February 5, 2010

Six dead in Azerbaijan military shooting

Six dead in Azerbaijan military shooting

BAKU — Two soldiers in Azerbaijan shot and killed four fellow servicemen before killing themselves, the defence ministry said Friday, in the latest shooting rampage to shock the ex-Soviet republic.

Media linked the killing with what experts say is rampant brutality and corruption in Azerbaijan's military.

The incident was the second mass shooting in Azerbaijan in less than a year, after a man shot dead 12 people at a university in the capital Baku last April before taking his life.

"Two soldiers opened fire killing four servicemen and wounding two before killing themselves," defence ministry deputy spokesman Temur Abdullayev told AFP.

He said the incident occurred on Thursday evening but that no further details were immediately available.

Azerbaijan's Trend news agency cast doubt on the ministry's version of events, quoting military sources as saying the two soldiers who carried out the shooting had been shot and killed while trying to flee the scene. It said a local division commander was among the dead victims.

The opposition Azadliq newspaper reported that the shooting took place in Azerbaijan's Dashkesan region on the border with Armenia.

Azerbaijan is locked in a long-simmering conflict with Armenia over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region, which broke from Baku's control with Yerevan's support during a war in the early 1990s.

Azadliq said a number of senior officers were among the victims and claimed that violence within the military was to blame for the shooting.

Experts and soldiers' rights groups have raised concerns about violence in the Azerbaijani military, saying a culture of corruption and brutal hazing prevails.

In a 2008 report, the International Crisis Group said the Azerbaijani military was plagued by "endemic corruption, nepotism and hazing."

Azerbaijani military prosecutors in 2008 arrested two sergeants and reprimanded several senior officers after videos surfaced on the Internet of conscript soldiers being savagely beaten.

Authorities have denied, however, that hazing is widespread in the military.

Rights groups have accused militaries throughout the former Soviet Union of tolerating brutal hazing practices inherited from the Soviet army.

The university shooting in April stunned this small, mainly Muslim republic on the Caspian Sea, which had never before seen the kind of public rampages that have plagued some Western countries in recent years.

Last November, a shooting spree on a US military base at Fort Hood, Texas, left 13 people dead and 43 wounded. US officials have said the suspected gunman, US Army Major Nidal Hasan, is being investigated for links to Islamic extremism.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gQmkN9Grc9u_z6PwFQ8xZ5hwcw2w

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