YEREVAN—The trial of former leaders from Artsakh continued yesterday in Baku. Defense motions were reviewed amid widespread criticism that the proceedings are politically motivated and part of a manufactured legal process.
The trial, which began on January 17 and resumed on January 21, targets 16 high-profile military and political figures, including former Presidents Arkady Ghukasyan, Bako Sahakyan and Arayik Harutyunyan; former State Minister Ruben Vardanyan; former Minister of Defense General Levon Mnatsakanyan; Chairman of the National Assembly Davit Ishkhanyan; General Davit Manukyan; former Minister of Foreign Affairs Davit Babayan and others.
The defendants face a range of charges, including terrorism and the formation of illegal armed groups — accusations that are widely considered baseless and politically motivated. They were captured during Azerbaijan’s military offensive in September 2023, which led to the forced displacement of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh.
In a statement to local media, the Baku Military Court said that it would decide on January 27 whether to grant house arrest for some of the accused. Notably, Arayik Harutyunyan, one of the highest-profile detainees, has not filed a request for house arrest, stating that any health issues were promptly addressed. Several other defendants, including Ghukasyan and Sahakyan, have requested house arrest.
Ruben Vardanyan, whose case has been singled out, has denounced the trial as a “sham.” In a public statement, he said that he has been subjected to pressure in prison and coerced into signing falsified protocols and interrogation records. His trial is set to continue separately, with the next hearing scheduled for January 27.
“I once again reiterate and state my complete innocence and the innocence of my Armenian compatriots also being held as political prisoners and demand an immediate end to this politically motivated case against us,” Vardanyan said.
Vardanyan’s legal team has raised concerns about the conditions of his detention and treatment during the investigation. According to his lawyers, Vardanyan went on a hunger strike in April 2024 to protest his conditions, including prolonged isolation, denial of access to lawyers and harsh confinement measures. His attorneys say that he was placed in a punishment cell, where he was subjected to 24-hour light exposure, deprived of sleep and forced to hold stress positions.
Vardanyan’s U.S. human rights lawyer, Jared Genser, says that Vardanyan was restricted from communicating with his defense team and denied water and basic necessities including toilet paper, bed sheets and the ability to wash or change clothes. These harsh conditions lasted for an extended period during his detention.
Ahead of the trial, Vardanyan sent a message to his family, stating that he has not provided testimony, except for stating his name. “I have been informed that I am facing 42 charges, some of which carry sentences up to life imprisonment. However, I have not been granted the opportunity to fully review the official indictment,” Vardanyan said. “My lawyer and I were merely allowed to skim through 422 volumes of the case files, all written solely in the Azerbaijani language, which I do not understand, within a very short timeframe — from December 9, 2024 to January 8, 2025.”
Despite his dire circumstances, Vardanyan remained hopeful, stressing that lasting peace could only be achieved through the collective efforts of the nations’ leaders, with the support of their societies. He concluded with a personal vow: “I promise to do everything possible to ensure this happens in my lifetime.”
According to Konstantin Zatulin, deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma’s committee on CIS relations, the trial is a form of personal revenge by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Zatulin condemned the trial as a vindictive effort to punish those who were central figures in the Artsakh government.
“These are my friends, and they are now among those accused of war crimes in 1,389 criminal cases opened since the 2023 war,” Zatulin remarked. “Ruben Vardanyan, who renounced his Russian citizenship to stand with the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, is also facing these politically motivated charges.”
Zatulin noted that while these figures languish in Azerbaijani prisons, the Armenian leadership, including Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, has failed to take meaningful steps toward their release. “The main traitor in this story is Nikol Pashinyan, who abandoned the people of Nagorno-Karabakh,” Zatulin said. “While our friends suffer in Baku’s jails, Pashinyan did nothing to help them.”
Meanwhile, protesters gathered outside the United Nations office in Yerevan and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the start of the trial to demand the immediate release of Armenian prisoners held in Azerbaijan. Gegham Stepanyan, the former Ombudsman of Artsakh, said that the trial cannot be considered a legitimate legal process, as it violates basic human rights. He criticized the Armenian government for its inaction in securing the release of the hostages and called on international organizations to increase pressure on Azerbaijan.
“The situation is clear — this trial is a political tool to pressure Armenia and humiliate the Armenian people,” Stepanyan told reporters. “We cannot accept this silence from our government. The Armenian authorities must take a firm stand and demand the immediate release of our people.”
In an effort to advocate for the rights and safety of those detained in Azerbaijan, Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced plans to submit additional evidence and legal demands to the European Court of Human Rights and the International Court of Justice.
The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Central Committee of Artsakh has condemned the trial as politically motivated, asserting that its primary goal is to exert pressure on Armenia and undermine the sovereignty of Artsakh. It emphasized the illegality of the proceedings, noting the blatant violation of human rights and the disregard for basic legal protections.
“It is clear to all that this fabricated trial serves a political purpose,” the statement reads. “Azerbaijan’s authoritarian state is attempting to discredit the legitimacy of Nagorno-Karabakh’s statehood through this process. The coercion and potential fabrication of testimonies under various forms of pressure cannot be considered valid grounds to challenge the existence of Nagorno-Karabakh or its sovereignty.”
The ARF Central Committee underscored the vital role that the detained leaders played in safeguarding Artsakh’s statehood and highlighted their unwavering commitment to the security of the Armenian population in September 2023, noting their decision to remain with their people despite the personal risk, which ultimately led to their capture and imprisonment in Baku.
“Nagorno-Karabakh’s statehood was founded on the will of the Armenian people, through the struggles and sacrifices of thousands of freedom-loving Armenians,” the statement continued. “Therefore, those currently being tried in the enemy’s court represent not only the detained individuals but also every Armenian who dreams of a homeland and fights for freedom.”
As the trial continues, the situation remains tense, with fears that Armenia will be further isolated on the world stage if diplomatic efforts to secure the release of the detainees are not successful. Armenian activists have urged the international community, including the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries, to step up pressure on Azerbaijan to halt the unjust proceedings and ensure the safe return of Armenian prisoners.
Hoory Minoyan
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The Turks do not know the meaning of the words “Law” and “Justice”.
Armenia confronts Barbarism on boths its Eastern and Western borders.
These shameful show trials by Azerbaijan have another purpose, apart from demonstrating its vindictiveness and humiliating the Armenian hostages – because that is what they are, not prisoners in the legal sense, in this farce called the “Azerbaijani justice system”.
Azerbaijan is resorting to “hostage diplomacy” to impose punitive demands on Armenia and wrest many more concessions from it, by holding the leaders of Artsakh as “bargaining chips”. Azerbaijan is keeping at least two dozen known Armenian prisoners of war and political prisoners – with many still unaccounted for, given Azerbaijan’s refusal to acknowledge or confirm their status.
This is what terrorist states like Azerbaijan do, which is the same what terrorist groups do, but as a state actor.
It would never have gone to this if Pashinyan stepped to the plate and helped in the Artsakh war. Instead he fired his generals and told his army to stand down. Now we have Armenians left out to rot in Baku. Pashinyan is having a good time in Davos this week as world powers tell him what to do next.
I do not agree with Zatulin 100%. Stop the blame game. All we need right now is unity of Armenian society, and safety for Republic of Armenia. #Free Armenian Hostages.
It is really frustrating reading some of the statements made by our politicians and activists in this article. We Armenians have a well-known phrase in Armenian that we often use to refer to fellow Armenians, those in position of power in particular, when we face a major catastrophe after the fact when we had all the opportunities to avoid such catastrophes in the first place. That phrase in Armenian is “Միամիտ Հայեր” which literally means “Naïve Armenians”. We are reluctant to do what we should have done decades ago when we were in position of power and did not do and then instead of looking inward and admitting our failures we start looking outward for a helping hand to solve and correct our mistakes. What should we have done when we had the chance and the power one might ask? Well, for starters, we could have done to them back in 1994 with our victory what they are trying to do to us today and that was to force the enemy into capitulation and made the reunification of Artsakh with Armenia a reality. Instead, we naively agreed to a false ceasefire giving the enemy the opportunity to recover to fight another day. Furthermore, we could have built residences and military camps in and around the Berdzor “Lachin” corridor eliminating the enemy gatherings under false “environmental” pretense and subsequent storm of this corridor by their military forcing the the Artsakh population into starvation. Other things we could have done would have been populating liberated territories with Armenians from all over the world, from the neighboring countries in particular, giving them land for free in return for a single family member to serve in the Artsakh defense army. Imagine if out of ten or so million Armenians worldwide only half a million Armenians (5%) were repatriated to these lands, their ancestral homelands, where they could live as they wished and contribute to their development sending a message to the enemy we are here to stay in addition to strengthening and increasing the defense force in many folds. We did none of those.
What else did we expect Azerbaijani criminals to do if not what they are doing now? These people are making statements as if they don’t know who terrorist Turks and their pseudo-Turkish Azerbaijani brothers-in crime are all about. I’m not surprised about the way they behave towards our people. The existence and the entire fabricated history of these two criminal states are predicated on the exclusion of the indigenous Armenians. That coward Ilham Aliyev is an opportunist fox. He is the son of the late KGB agent Heydar Aliyev whom we brought to his knees in our 1994 victory right in front of his eyes and with utmost devastating and humiliating defeat they never imagined in their wildest dreams. The father’s defeat was traumatic for the coward son who was MIA in the war spending his time and waiting out the war in Turkish and Russian casinos while our dedicated and brave soldiers were sending his countrymen back to Baku in body bags. Look for and watch some of the recent interviews the son Aliyev has given to BBC and others. His entire goal in the last twenty years ever since he came to power in 2003 after his father’s death in an American hospital, quite ironic for someone who hoped to drink tea in Yerevan and swim in Lake Sevan, has been to win a war against the Armenians to redeem himself and avenge his father’s humiliating defeat. He did not care at what cost and how many Azerbaijani soldiers, a hundred thousand up-to-date and nearly 40% of that in the first war, had to die for him to achieve.
Zatulin is absolutely correct by stating this is a form of “personal revenge“ by that coward Azerbaijani chicken-hawk Ilham Aliyev. But was he the one who achieved all that these criminals achieved? Of course not! The 2020 invasion and everything else that followed were as a result of Turkey’s terrorist defense ministry’s proxy war on the Armenians on behalf of militarily incompetent Azerbaijan. There were other criminal collaborators involved too such as Northern Syrian ISIS, Belarus and Israel. Aliyev’s entire future was dependent on the outcome of what happened in 2020. For the last twenty years he was practically begging the former Armenian leaders, born and raised in Artsakh and quite familiar with enemy’s dishonest character, for the return of some of these territories. He never imagined such an outcome. But that disastrous outcome, aside from terrorist Turkey and others, was facilitated by none other than incompetent and dysfunctional Pashinyan who gave up just about all Armenian liberated territories to the enemy without even firing a shot! Who in his right mind would elect a traitor like Pashinyan with no military and governing experience whatsoever as leader not once but twice for a country that has been in a state of war for the last thirty years! An unpatriotic cheat and a flip-flopper who washed his hands off Artsakh and let its population starve while sending trucks load of aid to terrorist Turkey for earthquake disaster relief. He was supposed to be the security guarantor of Artsakh but instead he let the Russians and the Azerbaijani enemy decide their future and we witnessed the result! I’m also convinced Artsakh leaders were tricked and turned over to the enemy by design.
There is a significant error in this sentence: “Ahead of the trial, Vardanyan sent a message to his family, stating that he has provided testimony, except for stating his name.”
Ruben stated that he has NOT provided testimony at any time.
Once due to the adverse circumstances Armenia in 2020 signed away from Arktash. Russia assumed security for the Armenians still there now surrounded by Azerbaijan. Russia failed to keep it’s side of the obligation how intentional or due to the geographic and resource issues this was has yet to be known. Thus for Armenians in Arktash they were doomed from 2020 no cause which signs away it’s own defence and entrusts it with others instead can expect to prosper. Any cause must always lead it’s own defence , support from allies is welcome as few causes are alone. Indeed one of the reasons for the failure was the lack of meaningful international support all along . If Armenia had sought to relieve Arktash after 2020 this would have been violation of the ceasefire and brought on attack from the now clearly stronger Azerbaijan and whilst it would have been heroic it would almost certainly have been disastrous . The Arktash government was staunchly pro Russia to the end only to find with a few who managed to escape in Russia’s friend Azerbaijan custody whether they still have the same level of faith in Russia remains to be determined.