By Ruzanna Stepanian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — A Yerevan-based lawyer representing Ruben Vardanyan, a prominent Armenian businessman jailed in Azerbaijan, said on Friday that she is preparing to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against a 20-year prison sentence given to him earlier this year.
“We are in the preparatory phase, the case will be filed in a few weeks,” Siranush Sahakyan told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“We will demonstrate that the accusation is political, that no individual criminal act was ever committed by Vardanyan,” she said. “The [Karabakh Armenians’] collective right to self-determination has been illegally qualified [by Baku] as terrorism.”
Vardanyan, who held the second-highest post in Nagorno-Karabakh’s leadership from November 2022 to February 2023, was arrested at an Azerbaijani checkpoint in the Lachin corridor in September 2023 as he fled the region along with its practically entire ethnic Armenian population. Seven other former Karabakh Armenian leaders were also arrested during the exodus that followed an Azerbaijani military offensive.
Five of them were sentenced to life imprisonment while the two others as well as Vardanyan received 20-year jail sentences in February at the end of yearlong trials denounced by Amnesty International as a “travesty.” They all denied a long list of accusations brought against them.
