By Ruzanna Stepanian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Five former leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh were sentenced to life imprisonment and two others received 20-year jail terms on Thursday, February 5, at the end of their yearlong trial in Azerbaijan condemned by Armenian human rights activists as a travesty of justice.
A military court in Baku handed slightly shorter prison sentences to eight other Karabakh Armenians who have been tried together with them. The defendants include three former Karabakh presidents. Arayik Harutyunyan, Bako Sahakyan and Arkadi Ghukasyan.
They as well as Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian-born billionaire and philanthropist, were captured by Azerbaijan right after its September 2023 military offensive that forced Karabakh’s entire population to flee to Armenia and restored Azerbaijani control over the region. Vardanyan, who is standing a separate trial, is expected to be sentenced to life in prison later this month.
The Azerbaijani court gave life sentences to Harutyunyan, Levon Mnatsakanyan, a former commander of Karabakh’s army, his ex-deputy Davit Manukyan as well as Davit Ishkhanyan and Davit Babayan, who served as the unrecognized republic’s parliament speaker and foreign minister respectively. Sahakyan and Ghukasyan were jailed for 20 years because of being over 65. All seven men have denied a long list of war crimes charges leveled against them.
The Azerbaijani authorities have not allowed independent media or observers to cover the trials. Vardanyan charged that they were accompanied by “egregious due process abuses” when he went on hunger strike in prison a year ago.
