Ahmadov was found guilty and sentenced to be shot by a firing squad for leading a mob and taking part in the murder of seven people. However, 90 of those who were tried were set free after a relatively short time as they were sentenced for hooliganism, rather than for murder and violence. There were many who expressed their dissatisfaction with the way the trials were organized and conducted. Soviet historian and dissident Roy Medvedev questioned the trials: "Who knows why, but the court examined the Sumgait events by subdividing them into single episodes and not as a programmatic act of genocide." Most Armenians and Azerbaijanis were also dissatisfied with the trials. Armenians complained that the true instigators of the pogrom were never caught whereas Azerbaijanis stated the sentences were too harsh and were upset with the fact that the trials were not held in Azerbaijan. Some Azerbaijanis even went on to campaign for the "freedom for the heroes of Sumgait." Indeed, many of the perpetrators of the pogrom gained titles of national heroes and/or high positions in the government, where they still serve today. Reactions In Armenia and Karabakh The pogrom was immediately linked to the Armenian genocide of 1915 in the Armenian national consciousness. On the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day on April 24, 1988, a khachkar (cross stone) dedicated to the pogrom victims was planted at the Armenian Genocide memorial at Tsitsernakaberd. February 28 was designated as a public holiday in Armenia in 2005. It is officially known as "The Day of Memory of the Victims of Massacres in Azerbaijani SSR and Protection of the Rights of the Deported Armenian Population". International In July 1988, within months of the Sumgait massacre, the United States Senate unanimously passed Amendment 2690 to the Fiscal Year 1989 Foreign Operations Appropriations bill (H.R. 4782), concerning the Karabakh conflict, which called on the Soviet government to "respect the legitimate aspirations of the Armenian people …" and noted that "dozens of Armenians have been killed and hundreds injured during the recent unrests…" On July 7, 1988, the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning the violence against Armenians in Azerbaijan. On July 27, 1990, 130 leading academics and human rights advocates wrote "An Open Letter to International Public Opinion on Anti-Armenian Pogroms in the Soviet Union" published in the New York Times. The letter, which was signed by professors from Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Berkeley, UCLA,