In an audio statement communicated to his family and publicized by News.am on Wednesday, one of them, Davit Babayan, also said he and some of other prisoners are suffering from “serious health problems.”
Five of the prisoners, including Babayan, were sentenced to life imprisonment and the two others received 20-year jail terms in February at the end of what Armenian lawyers and human rights activists see as a sham trial. A military court in Baku also handed slightly shorter prison sentences to eight other Karabakh Armenians tried together with them. An Azerbaijani appeals court upheld the sentences two weeks ago.
“This was a theater whose script was written in advance,” Babayan charged, listing some of what he described numerous and egregious violations of the due process during the trials.
“This was a purely formal stage that we had to go through in order to use it later to apply to an international court … One of the defense attorneys here has stated that they [the Azerbaijani authorities] do not want the case to reach an international court because more than 95 percent of the accusations are fabricated,” he said.
“I have expressed my gratitude for such quality and quantity of shortcomings because … we will present all this in an international court,” added Babayan, who had served as Karabakh’s foreign minister.
The seven men as well as Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian-born businessman who briefly served as Karabakh premier in late 2022 and early 2023, were captured right after the September 2023 Azerbaijani offensive that restored Baku’s full control over Karabakh and forced the region’s Armenian population to flee to Armenia. They all deny a long list of war crimes charges levelled against them.
Vardanyan was sentenced to 20 years in prison in a separate trial. He did not appeal against his sentence, unlike the other former Karabakh leaders. This did not prevent him from appealing to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) through a Yerevan-based lawyer last month.
“I’m not the only one with health problems. A number of my comrades have really serious health problems,” Babayan said without elaborating.
He insisted that the prisoners remain defiant and urged Armenians to also “stay strong.”
“It’s one thing to fight for justice, it’s another to sit [in prison] for it,” he said. “But be aware that although we are sitting, we are not kneeling.”
Prospects for the release anytime soon of these and other Armenian prisoners remain uncertain one year after the initialing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty in Washington. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian officials insist that Yerevan has been doing its best to try to secure their release. Their critics dismiss these assurances.
Vardanyan has likewise accused the Armenian government of being indifferent to the prisoners’ fate. He has repeatedly lambasted Pashinian in statements from an Azerbaijani prison released through his family. Another former Karabakh leader, Davit Ishkhanian has gone farther, saying that Yerevan does not want Baku to free them.
