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Former Karabakh leaders languish in Azerbaijani jails awaiting trial
Son of one high-profile political detainee alleges mistreatment.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev doesn’t want anything to draw attention away from the annual UN climate summit, COP29, which will take place in Baku in November. Accordingly, he’s pushed up parliamentary elections to September, so they won’t coincide with COP29. But there’s another potential distraction that Baku hasn’t yet fully addressed – the trials of prominent Karabakh leaders in Azerbaijani custody.
When Azerbaijani forces completed their reconquista of Karabakh in September of last year, they took into custody a bevy of Armenians who held leadership roles in the de facto republic during the almost three decades it operated as a quasi-independent entity. The precise number of those who can be described as war-related political detainees in Azerbaijani custody is a matter of contention. What’s certain is Baku wants to settle old scores.
At least eight prominent Karabakh individuals were arrested by Baku in the days after the September 2023 takeover, including de facto former presidents Arkadi Ghukasyan, Bako Sahakyan and Arayik Harutyunyan. Former military leaders of the region were also arrested.
According to the Armenian lawyers working with the prisoners in Azerbaijan, at least 23 Armenian political figures are being held in Azerbaijan: five of them were captured during the initial phase of the Second Karabakh War in 2020, with the remainder detained last September. About 80 additional Armenians have not been accounted for: Armenian lawyers claim to have information that many are in Azerbaijani custody, but Baku hasn’t confirmed such information.
A few trials have already occurred. The most recent concluded in mid-July: Karabakh Armenian Rashid Beglaryan was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, on a variety of charges, including “committing genocide” in Khojaly in 1992, during the First Karabakh War. The first Armenian detainee tried and convicted for conduct during the war was Vagif Khachaturyan who received 15 years last November, also for “committing genocide” in Khojaly.
Perhaps the highest-profile detainee is Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian-Russian billionaire who briefly held a top political post in Karabakh before the territory was completely overrun by Azerbaijani forces. Family members, who are permitted brief conversations with the detainee, say that he has been treated harshly, including prolonged periods of solitary confinement. There is no indication when his trial will take place, they add. An air of mystery shrouds the case: despite claims from the Azeri prosecutor that the investigation has concluded, Vardanyan’s local lawyers assert that the process is still ongoing.
In April, Vardanyan went on a hunger strike to protest his treatment. His lawyers in June filed a complaint with the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Vardanyan’s family members and lawyers say he’s been punished for his hunger-strike protest, denied access to drinking water for over two days and forced to “stand for extended periods.” They add he has lost a “substantial amount of weight.”
“He was also deprived of proper medical support,” Vardanyan’s son, David Vardanyan, told Eurasianet. Vardanyan said his father eventually received a medical examination at a government facility, but “the report contained several factual errors,” casting doubt on its credibility.
The detainee’s son called on Azerbaijani officials to take quick action to address the cases against the Karabakh Armenian political detainees.
Armenian officials in Yerevan, meanwhile, have filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights about the detainees’ treatment. David Vardanyan said he is unaware if the Armenian government is engaging Azerbaijan in other ways on the issue. “There hasn’t been any concrete discussion or steps voiced to us by the Armenian government,” he said. “I remain hopeful that something is being done behind the scenes.”
Ruben Vardanyan made his fortune as an investment banker in Russia, running Troika Dialog, an entity implicated in a vast money-laundering scheme that benefited the Kremlin. In 2022, shortly after the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, he renounced his Russian citizenship and moved to Karabakh, obtaining the governmental post of state minister. He was taken into custody last September as he was attempting to cross the border into Armenia. Azerbaijani officials suspect him of acting as a political agent of Russia.
David Vardanyan maintained that a sense of Armenian patriotism motivated his father’s move to Karabakh. “He knew there was a worse outcome for him than being taken a prisoner,” Vardanyan said. “Yet he decided to go.”
(c) 2024, Eurasianet
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