Americans for Artsakh petition UN Working Group for release of Artsakh’s former foreign minister
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans for Artsakh (AFA) submitted a petition to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) requesting the release of Davit Babayan, former foreign minister of the Republic of Artsakh, who is currently held in an undisclosed detention facility in Baku, Azerbaijan. This petition follows a Nov. 14, 2025 announcement by Azerbaijani prosecutors that they would seek sentences of up to life imprisonment for 15 former leaders and officials of Artsakh, including Babayan.
According to AFA, Babayan is among 31 individuals held in detention in Azerbaijan in connection with the recent conflicts involving Artsakh. The petition requests, among other measures, an end to reported solitary confinement and restrictions on basic needs, access to medical care, family members and legal counsel, as well as a prompt and independent review of the lawfulness of his detention.
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Babayan and the other Artsakh leaders and politicians who are rotting in Azerbaijani prisons as hostages (they are not “prisoners” or “POWs” in the legal sense), after they were seized (they were not “arrested”) by Azerbaijan during the blockade and seizure of Artsakh in 2023, face not only the near certainty of being sentenced to life imprisonment by Azerbaijan’s kangaroo courts, but the very real possibility of dying in prison. Babayan and all the Artsakh leaders and politicians, were abandonded and thrown under the bus by Pashinyan, because they opposed his treachery and selling out of Artsakh to Azerbaijan, and he is very eager to see them rot and die in prison one by one, and in this way get rid of as many of his opponents as possible. Normally, it would have been the duty of the Armenian government to relentlessly campaign and clamor for their release, and also lobby other countries to pressure Azerbaijan to release them. Tragically, since Armenia is under the rule of the archtraitor and appeaser Pashinyan, it falls to Armenian Diaspora lobby groups and organizations, who relentlessly campaign hard for their release, just like they relentlessly worked hard to advance Armenian national interests on their own, when there was no independent Armenia at that time to support them. It has practically reverted to that situation under the quisling and satrap Pashinyan.