By Anush Mkrtchian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — A US lawyer representing Armenian businessman and philanthropist Ruben Vardanyan warned on Thursday, June 12, that he and 22 other Armenians will remain imprisoned in Azerbaijan unless Yerevan presses for their release in peace talks with Baku.
Jared Genser pointed out that a draft Armenian-Azerbaijan peace treaty finalized in March reportedly does not address the fate of the prisoners and instead commits the two sides to withdrawing their international lawsuits filed against each other.
“What that means is that if the prisoners are not released by then, simultaneously with the signing of the treaty, he [Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan] won’t be able to raise the issue of prisoners going forward,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service in Yerevan. “And what that means is that they will be trapped in Azerbaijan, with [Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev being able to do what he wants.”
Like Armenian opposition leaders and other domestic critics of Pashinyan, Genser earlier accused Yerevan of doing little to try to have the prisoners freed. Pashinyan has said that his government will make only “proportionate” and “reasonable” efforts for that purpose. He has claimed that Yerevan will harm the prisoners if it acts more forcefully. His detractors say that he is simply afraid of angering Baku.
Vardanyan and seven other prisoners are former leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh who were captured by Azerbaijan during or shortly after its September 2023 military offensive that forced Karabakh’s entire population to flee to Armenia and restored Azerbaijani control over the region. They went on trial in January together with eight other Karabakh Armenians, facing a long list of charges, including genocide and war crimes.
