YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — In what amounted to a prisoner exchange, four Armenians were released from an Azerbaijani prison and repatriated on Wednesday, January 14, just as Armenia sent home two Syrian men captured during the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was the first to announce the release of the Armenian prisoners on social media. He said they were handed over to Armenian authorities on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
The freed prisoners include Vagif Khachatryan, a former resident of Karabakh who was arrested by Azerbaijani security services in July 2023 as he was escorted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to Armenia for urgent medical treatment. Khachatryan was subsequently tried and sentenced by an Azerbaijani military court to 15 years in prison for allegedly committing war crimes during the 1991-1994 Armenian-Azerbaijani war. The 70-year-old denied the accusations.
Khachatryan was hospitalized late last month following what authorities in Baku described as a sharp deterioration of his health. Pashinyan said his current condition seems “satisfactory.”
Also freed was Viken Euljekjian, a 46-year-old native of Lebanon who had moved to Karabakh before the 2020 war. He was detained by Azerbaijani forces outside the Karabakh town of Shushi (Shusha) on November 10, 2020 hours after a Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the six-week war. The two other Armenian prisoners set free on were detained in the same area on November 11, 2020. They are Gevorg Sujyan and Davit Davtyan.
Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) described their release as a “practical result of peace established between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
