Baku Court Says Artsakh Leaders Are Guilty, Calls Artsakh Movement ‘Criminal Enterprise’

The lead prosecutor of the case against 15 former Artsakh leaders concluded that the defendants are guilty and went on to call the entire Artsakh Movement and Artsakh itself “criminal” entities, blaming Armenia in abetting its creation.

A Baku military court on Monday said the sham trials have proven the guilt of the 15 former Artsakh leaders, taking into consideration their indirect participation in alleged crimes committed against Azerbaijan at different times.

In his statement, the lead prosecutor referred in detail to the Artsakh movement, also qualifying it as a “criminal enterprise.”

“They united against the people of Azerbaijan around the idea of ​​national hatred and enmity, within the framework of a criminal organization, which they called ‘Miatsum (Unity),’” the prosecutor said in his conclusion.

The prosecutor argued that the goal of the leaders of the “criminal organization” was to separate Karabakh from Azerbaijan at all costs and occupy the sovereign territories of Azerbaijan.

Speaking about the ideology of the Artsakh movement, the court also published a list of political and public figures in its conclusion, accusing them of spreading “criminal ideology.”

Among the names mentioned in the document include writer and academician Zori Balayan, famous Armenian poetess Silva Kaputikyan, political activist Igor Muradyan, Vazgen Manukyan, Robert Kocharian, Serzh Sargsian and Jirair Sefilyan.

However, when discussing the Artsakh movement, the assistant to Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General did not mention the name of Armenia’s former president, Levon Ter-Petrosian, who headed the Karabakh Committee.

While saying that the court had proven that the former leaders of Artsakh committed “serious crimes,” the prosecutor has not yet announced the type of sentence he is seeking from the court.

The indictment of the 15 Artsakh leaders specifically referred to the liberation of Shushi in 1992. The Azerbaijani prosecutor noted that the order and instructions for the attack on Shushi from four directions were given by Armenia and carried out under the leadership of Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan.

Vazgen Manukyan, who is currently an outspoken opposition activist in Armenia, was once the defense minister of Armenia and one of the co-founders of the Karabakh committee.

“The whole ideology of the movement was to return Artsakh to Armenia through a constitutional process, based on the principle of self-determination of nations,” Manukyan told Azatutyun.am, adding that the movement served as mechanism to fulfill the will of the people of Karabakh, which was to united Artsakh to Armenia.

As for the Baku court’s accusations that Armenia organized and carried out a war against Azerbaijan, Manukyan said, “Azerbaijan was the one who incited and organized the war, the Armenian people were engaged in self-defense.”

He said through the sham trial of the 15 former Artsakh leaders and the groundless accusations against Armenia, Azerbaijan is only trying to justify the crimes it committed in Karabakh, ultimately subjecting the Armenians of Artsakh to ethnic cleansing.

“They drove a population from their homeland. It is tantamount to genocide. Now they can invent whatever they want to justify that,” Manukyan emphasized.

The opposition leader also said that current government of Armenia has not done anything to sufficiently address the issue of the Armenian prisoners of war.

“I sometimes even get the impression that their [the Armenian government’s] perception of power was that they got rid of strong people because those people could play a role in political and election campaigns,” Manukyan said.