By Ani Avetisyan
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev doesn’t want anything to draw attention away from the annual UN climate summit, COP29, which will take place in Baku in November. Accordingly, he’s pushed up parliamentary elections to September, so they won’t coincide with COP29. But there’s another potential distraction that Baku hasn’t yet fully addressed – the trials of prominent Karabakh leaders in Azerbaijani custody.
When Azerbaijani forces completed taking over Karabakh in September of last year, they took into custody a bevy of Armenians who held leadership roles in the de facto republic during the almost three decades it operated as a quasi-independent entity. The precise number of those who can be described as war-related political detainees in Azerbaijani custody is a matter of contention. What’s certain is Baku wants to settle old scores.
At least eight prominent Karabakh individuals were arrested by Baku in the days after the September 2023 takeover, including former presidents Arkadi Ghukasyan, Bako Sahakyan and Arayik Harutyunyan. Former military leaders of the region were also arrested.
According to the Armenian lawyers working with the prisoners in Azerbaijan, at least 23 Armenian political figures are being held in Azerbaijan: five of them were captured during the initial phase of the Second Karabakh War in 2020, with the remainder detained last September. About 80 additional Armenians have not been accounted for: Armenian lawyers claim to have information that many are in Azerbaijani custody, but Baku hasn’t confirmed such information.
A few trials have already occurred. The most recent concluded in mid-July: Karabakh Armenian Rashid Beglaryan was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, on a variety of charges, including “committing genocide” in Khojaly in 1992, during the First Karabakh War. The first Armenian detainee tried and convicted for conduct during the war was Vagif Khachaturyan who received 15 years last November, also for “committing genocide” in Khojaly.
