By Naira Bulghadarian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Armenia’s government remains reluctant to provide lawyers representing an ethnic Armenian resident of Nagorno-Karabakh jailed by Azerbaijan with medical records which they say could facilitate his release from prison.
The 58-year-old Karen Avanesyan is one of a handful of Karabakh Armenians who did not flee to Armenia during Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military offensive that restored Azerbaijani control over the region. Avanesyan was arrested by Azerbaijani security services last September for allegedly plotting a “terrorist” attack on Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. They claimed that he opened fire from an automatic assault rifle and threw hand grenades while approaching the site of an event in Stepanakert attended by Aliyev.
The authorities released what they called video evidence of Avanesyan’s preparations for the attack. The footage shot in Stepanakert showed him walking not towards that site but in the opposite direction. Nor did he carry any weapons.
An Azerbaijani court sentenced Avanesyan to 16 years in prison on December 25 at the end of what human rights lawyers in Armenia condemned as a sham trial. Citing Karabakh’s former health authorities, they say that he suffers from a serious mental illness and should not have been put on trial in the first place.
Some of those lawyers made this argument in a lawsuit filed with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The Strasbourg court responded by demanding documentary evidence of Avanesyan’s medical condition.
