Not Nuremberg
Aliyev compared the Baku trial to Nuremberg — and got it wrong on every count.
In February 2026, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev made the following statement in an interview with France 24:
“These people committed serious crimes against humanity. Imagine after the Second World War, the Nuremberg trials, and all those Nazi leaders, who were sentenced to death, in two months some would come and say, please release them.”
When asked by the interviewer whether the comparison was apt, Aliyev replied: “Yes, absolutely. It’s even worse, even worse. Their crimes were even worse than what the Nazis did during World War II.”
Invoking Nuremberg is a classic device for legitimization through a great precedent. The calculation is simple: The audience will not check the details. For a domestic Azerbaijani audience, it works without fail. But on an international stage — in Munich — it is a risky move, precisely because the people in that room know their history.
Nuremberg is one of the few trials in history with clear, verifiable standards. That is precisely what makes a comparison to it such a convenient political tool — and such a dangerous one. Open any textbook on international law, and the comparison begins to work against the person who made it.
Below: seven parameters. The two proceedings do not align on a single one.
1. Transparency: Nuremberg — yes, Baku — no
The Nuremberg trials (1945–1946) were open to the entire world. Hundreds of journalists from around the world were present in the courtroom, alongside diplomats and international observers. Transcripts of the proceedings were published daily. The Allied powers made the process as transparent as possible, deliberately — precisely so that it would become a historic precedent.
The Baku Military Court was officially declared “open to the public.” In practice: international media were not admitted to the hearings, representatives of foreign embassies were not admitted, independent NGO observers were not admitted. Only individuals from a preapproved government list were allowed inside — one or two pro-government Azerbaijani outlets. A significant portion of the indictments and evidentiary materials was classified as a state secret. Azerbaijani state media published video footage from the hearings, creating the appearance of transparency in its complete absence.
According to the Reporters Without Borders 2025 World Press Freedom Index, Azerbaijan ranks 167th out of 180 countries. Aliyev himself was personally named by RSF that same year as a “press freedom predator.”
Nuremberg was designed for the entire world to see justice. Baku — for the entire world to see only its imitation.
2. International character: A tribunal versus a national military court
The Nuremberg Tribunal was an International Military Tribunal. Its judges represented four powers: the USSR, the United States, Great Britain and France. None of them was a direct party to the case against each individual defendant. It was precisely this international composition that gave Nuremberg its legitimacy — the verdict was not delivered by an adversary in a bilateral conflict, but by the international community on behalf of all humanity.
The Baku proceedings took place in Azerbaijan’s national military court — a state that is a direct party to the conflict. The judges are Azerbaijani citizens, appointed by the state apparatus of the prosecuting country.
Even the geography is telling. None of the four powers moved the proceedings to their own capital. Nuremberg is a German city — the historic symbol of Nazi ideology and the site of the NSDAP’s party rallies. The choice of venue carried a message: Justice does not belong to the victors — it belongs to history. In Baku, that principle is reversed: A state party to the conflict is trying the other side at home, in its own court, under its own laws, with its own judges.
At Nuremberg, the international community put criminals on trial. In Baku — one party to a conflict is trying the other.
3. Who was in the dock
Nuremberg put Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Wilhelm Keitel in the dock – men who organised the Holocaust, unleashed the Second World War, and signed orders for mass extermination. Their guilt was documented across thousands of pages of their own orders, Third Reich archives, and survivor testimony.
Among the defendants in the Baku proceedings is Ruben Vardanyan. A man who: directed more than $1.5 billion toward humanitarian projects around the world;
founded the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative — a program that has implemented hundreds of projects worldwide and reached more than 3 million people with assistance. It is worth noting that the indictment itself characterises the Aurora Initiative as a structure “financing terrorism.” The selection committee of its annual prize includes Nobel laureates, members of national parliaments, former heads of state and leading human rights advocates of international standing. The 2025 prize laureate is a physician from Sudan saving lives in zones of armed conflict. If this constitutes terrorism financing — then what, exactly, qualifies as humanitarian work? founded UWC Dilijan, an international college in Armenia whose alumni represent 121 countries — including students from nations in active conflict with one another; founded the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, investing more than $600 million; restored Armenian churches, a Russian monastery on Mount Athos — and the Yukhari Govhar Agha Mosque in Shushi; never commanded military units and never held a military position.
A telling detail from the proceedings themselves: Not a single prosecution witness stated that they personally knew Vardanyan or had ever dealt with him directly. All of them knew of him exclusively “from the media and social networks.”
Nazi leaders destroyed cultural and human heritage. Vardanyan restored it.
4. Guilt before verdict
At Nuremberg, the presumption of innocence was observed: the defendants were formally considered innocent until a verdict was rendered. Of the 24 defendants, three were acquitted.
In the case of Vardanyan and the other Armenian detainees, President Aliyev publicly referred to them as “criminals” long before the first hearing. Azerbaijani state media ran a systematic propaganda campaign against the defendants throughout the pretrial investigation. Former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo, in his legal opinion, characterized the proceedings as “a political persecution aimed at delegitimizing the entire historical, political and cultural heritage of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Nuremberg sought evidence of guilt. Baku treated it as a given.
5. Political contradiction: 30 Years at the Same table — then the dock
In 1994, Azerbaijan signed the Bishkek ceasefire protocol alongside Armenia and the Nagorno- Karabakh Republic — thereby recognizing the NKR as a formal party to the conflict. For nearly 30 years, the political status of Karabakh was the subject of negotiations within the OSCE Minsk Group framework, under the co-chairmanship of the United States, Russia and France. The very existence of this entity was the subject of an international diplomatic process.
Today, Baku officially characterizes the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic as a “criminal organization.” Furthermore, the charges do not criminalize specific acts of violence — they criminalize the very act of performing political functions within the NKR: holding office, participating in governance, making decisions.
If governing Karabakh is itself a crime — then what, exactly, was the international community trying to resolve for all those years? This is not legal logic. It is the retroactive criminalization of political history, dressed in judicial form.
6. Legal basis: What the UN never said about Nagorno-Karabakh
Nuremberg prosecuted crimes recognized as such by the entire international community: the organization of the Holocaust, wars of aggression, mass executions. The legal foundation was universal — which is precisely why the tribunal became the cornerstone of modern international law.
In Baku, the proceedings target the actions of officials of an unrecognized – but, crucially, never declared illegal — republic. The UN Security Council never adopted a resolution characterizing the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic as an illegitimate regime. This was not an oversight — it was a legal position. When the U.N. deemed such action necessary, it acted explicitly: In 1983, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was declared illegal under UN Security Council Resolution 541, and member states were called upon not to recognize it. No such action was ever taken regarding Nagorno-Karabakh.
The international community did not merely refrain from declaring the NKR illegal. It actively engaged with it as a political entity. The U.N. Security Council tasked the OSCE with mediating the conflict — leading to the creation of the Minsk Group to work with the parties to the conflict, including the NKR. The United States provided humanitarian assistance directly to the government of Nagorno-Karabakh. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs — representatives of the United States, Russia and France — met for decades with NKR leadership to discuss paths toward a settlement.
All of these facts point to one conclusion: The international community de facto recognized the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic as a political entity representing a people exercising their right to self-determination. When a state criminalizes participation in the governance of such an entity after the fact — that is not the application of law. It is its retroactive creation, in violation of the entire history of international engagement.
In other words: The people in the dock are charged with exercising the functions of governance in an entity that international law never declared illegal. No legal precedent for such a prosecution exists anywhere in international practice.
Nuremberg created precedents of international justice. Baku violates them.
7. The historical paradox: What were the Nuremberg Principles designed to protect?
The Nuremberg Principles were created precisely so that states could not carry out ethnic persecution and the deportation of peoples with impunity. Applying those principles to events in Nagorno-Karabakh inevitably raises questions about the forced exodus of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenian civilians in September 2023.
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention publicly criticized Aliyev’s comparison, calling it unacceptable.
Moreover, in 2023 the International Court of Justice officially found that Azerbaijan was in breach of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination with respect to ethnic Armenians. When a state whose conduct has been characterized by the principal judicial organ of the United Nations as racially discriminatory compares its own proceedings to the Nuremberg Tribunal — an institution created specifically to overcome racism and genocide — that is not merely an inappropriate comparison. It is its precise opposite.
To state it plainly: the very Ilham Aliyev who publicly compares Armenian leaders to Nazis leads a state officially found by the International Court of Justice to be guilty of racial discrimination — the very practice that the Nuremberg Tribunal was established to eradicate. This is not only a moral paradox. It is a mirror image of the accusation: The man charging others with Nazi-era crimes has himself been found — by force of international law — to have engaged in racial discrimination against the very people whose leaders he is now putting on trial.
When the leader of a state under whose rule the mass displacement of an ethnic population took place invokes the Nuremberg Tribunal, he is invoking a legal instrument created precisely against such precedents.
Conclusion
The Nuremberg trials are a monument of international law. That is precisely why any comparison to them demands conformity with the standards they established: transparency, an international composition of judges, a genuine right to a defense, presumption of innocence and documented crimes.
By every one of these standards, the Baku proceedings do not merely fall short of Nuremberg. They are its opposite.
In the view of the International Court of Justice, it is Azerbaijan’s political leadership that systematically violates the prohibition on racial discrimination. Nuremberg was created precisely so that such violations would never recur. An appeal to Nuremberg by a state found guilty of racism by the principal judicial organ of the United Nations is not merely a historical error. It is its vivid illustration.
Historical analogies are a sharp instrument. Those who wield them carelessly cut themselves.
One final detail. Ruben Vardanyan — the man Aliyev compared to the Nazis — restored a mosque in Shushi. A Muslim place of worship. With his own funds and funds he personally helped raise. The question of what is happening to Armenian churches on Azerbaijani-controlled territory remains open.
Aliyev said: “Imagine Nuremberg.” We did. That is precisely why the comparison does not hold.
