TBILISI (Reuters) — Lawyers for Ruben Vardanyan, a former top official in the Armenian administration of Nagorno-Karabakh who is now detained in Azerbaijan, on Thursday, October 3, 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.
