Ex-Karabakh official held by Azerbaijan claims torture, lack of speedy trial

Ex-Karabakh official held by Azerbaijan claims torture, lack of speedy trial

Lawyers for Ruben Vardanyan, a former top official in the ethnic Armenian administration of Nagorno-Karabakh who is now detained in Azerbaijan, on Thursday filed legal actions in Baku alleging he had been tortured and denied the right to a speedy trial.

Azerbaijani officials declined to comment on the lawsuits.

Vardanyan was arrested and jailed along with several other top Karabakh officials following a lightning offensive by Baku's forces in September 2023 to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, part of Azerbaijan that had been under the control of its ethnic Armenian population since the early 1990s.

In a statement, Vardanyan's lawyers said one of the cases related to treatment that constituted torture during a hunger strike he mounted in April 2024.

They said that in response Vardanyan was placed in a punishment cell, forced to stand, forbidden to bathe, and deprived of water for two days.

In another action, Vardanyan's lawyers said that his right to a speedy trial had been violated by his detention since last year. A separate lawsuit accuses a Russian-language Azerbaijani newspaper, the Baku Worker, of defaming Vardanyan.

Baku is gearing up to host the COP29 climate change conference in November. In the run-up to the event, it is expected to face increased scrutiny of its human rights record, including the jailing of journalists and activists which has drawn concern from the United States and the European Union.

Its military victory in Karabakh last year brought an end to a separatist conflict that had begun before the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.

Virtually all of the territory's 100,000 or so ethnic Armenians have now fled to Armenia, while some ethnic Azeris, hundreds of thousands of whom had previously fled homes in and around Karabakh, have returned.

In the statement, Vardanyan's lawyers urged Azerbaijan to release all Karabakh Armenian prisoners held in the country before the summit begins.

A billionaire banker who was born in Armenia before making his fortune in Russia, Vardanyan moved to Nagorno-Karabakh in 2022, and was appointed to the number-two position in the breakaway region's government shortly after.

He resigned from government in February 2023, during a ten-month blockade of the territory by Azerbaijan.