Faces of the 23 Armenian hostages being held by Azerbaijan.
Nearly two years after an Azerbaijani military operation forced the entire Armenian Christian population of Nagorno Karabakh to flee, Azerbaijan continues to detain at least 23 Armenians – civilians, POWs and members of the Nagorno Karabakh elected government. 80 more are considered forcibly disappeared.
As the second anniversary of the invasion rolls round the prisoners appear more vulnerable than ever.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will close its mission in Baku “at the beginning of September,” the Armenian news outlet Azatutyun reported, quoting the Azerbaijani foreign ministry. The ICRC is the only external organization granted access to the detainees. It has paid them regular visits in prison, reporting back to their families on their state of health and arranging phone calls.
The withdrawal of the ICRC means there will be no possibility to independently monitor the condition of the hostages. Two of the detainees – Ruben Vardanyan and Vicken Euljekjian – are known to be in a weakened state of health, having staged hunger strikes to draw attention to their situation.
Azerbaijan announced in early March that the ICRC and United Nations bodies had been informed that “they must leave our country,” as part of a move towards Azerbaijani “self-sufficiency.” But no date was given for the withdrawal. The last ICRC prisoner visit is thought to have taken place in June.
Detainees “at the mercy of Azerbaijani authorities”
As Armenian human rights lawyer Siranush Sahakyan commented in March, the move leaves the prisoners “entirely at the mercy of Azerbaijani authorities, exposing them to the very real dangers of indefinite detention, psychological and physical coercion, and the continued exploitation of hostages as instruments of political leverage.”
Sahakyan further warned that, “The ICRC’s expulsion will sever a vital humanitarian lifeline—the channel of communication between detainees and their families. Deprived of any means to connect, detainees will endure heightened psychological distress, while their families will be plunged into an agonizing uncertainty.”
The family of hostage Vicken Euljekjian has experienced this agonizing uncertainty. On May 11, his wife Linda said she had last spoken to her husband in an ICRC-facilitated call in February. After being denied the right to make a further call to his wife, Vicken staged a two-week hunger strike. He was then allowed to speak to her very briefly. Without the ICRC’s mediation, it is unclear if or when prisoners and their families will have the opportunity to talk.
Trials taking place behind closed doors
Meanwhile, 16 of the 23 detainees continue to stand trial before a military court in Baku. Information is scarce as international observers and media are excluded from the courtroom. The accused have been denied access to impartial counsel and the right to review the evidence against them.
Fifteen prisoners are being tried collectively, while one, Ruben Vardanyan, is standing trial separately. The 15 include three former presidents of Nagorno Karabakh – Arayik Harutyunyan, Arkadi Ghukasyan and Babo Sahakyan. The defendants face a broad range of charges, from “slavery” to “genocide.”
Vardanyan, a businessman and philanthropist who served for a short time in the Nagorno Karabakh government, is apparently being tried separately because of the severity of the charges against him. In addition to the original terrorism-related charges, the authorities filed 45 new charges against him in December 2024.
Sahakyan, who represents the families of the Armenian prisoners before the European Court of Human Rights, has warned that there is no possibility of an impartial ruling given that the Azerbaijani justice system is “one of the least independent and most corrupt in the world.”
Prisoner rights violated
Following his latest hearing on July 22, she said Ruben Vardanyan was being blamed for actions that occurred when he held no state position, and was not even in Nagorno Karabakh.
Beyond this, Sahakyan has outlined a number of “gross violations” of Vardanyan’s rights. She said the court had disregarded all motions filed by the defendant, denied him full access to case materials, and included falsified records in the case file. Further, he was being tried by a military court despite being a civilian.
“As a result, the proceedings have created a fundamentally unfair scenario in which the defendant is stripped of any meaningful opportunity to contest the charges or assert his innocence. In such conditions, the very notion of a fair trial is reduced to a façade, entirely devoid of substance,” Sahakyan said.
Abandoned by the government?
As the 23 detainees languish in jail, the Armenian government is facing accusations that it is not doing enough to secure their release.
Azatutyun reports that Yerevan only condemned the trials of its citizens after “weeks of effective silence” and in the face of domestic criticism.
“Yerevan does not seem to have pushed for the release of the prisoners in its talks with Baku on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty finalized in March,” it wrote. However, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan insisted on July 16 that his administration was “continuing to ‘deal with’ the issue,” the news website said.
Azatutyun quotes Vardanyan’s U.S. lawyer, Jared Genser, as saying that the peace treaty apparently does not address the hostage issue, instead committing the two sides to dropping their lawsuits against each other. This means that, if it is agreed before the prisoners are released, Pashinyan will not be able to raise their plight with Azerbaijan in future.
“And what that means is that they [the hostages] will be trapped in Azerbaijan, with [Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev being able to do what he wants,” Genser said.
