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The Foreign Minister of the Netherlands Caspar Veldkamp has said that his country, as well as the EU, will continue to focus on the issue of the Armenian captives held in Azerbaijan.
The Dutch FM was asked at a press conference in Yerevan to comment on possible steps for achieving the release of the unlawfully held Armenian POWs and captives in Azerbaijan.
“We believe that the prisoners and captives must be protected properly in line with international standards and have the right to a free and fair trial,” the Dutch FM said.
He said that the Netherlands and the EU will continue to advance the issue.
“Be sure that in this case also the Netherlands and the EU will continue to advance the issue, we have drawn our attention on this issue. This issue has been raised in Brussels, and this is something that we will continue to follow,” he said, adding that the issue will be raised in Azerbaijan as well.
Azerbaijan has officially acknowledged that it is holding 23 Armenian prisoners despite a post-war obligation to release all POWs and detainees.
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan had earlier described the Azeri trial as “mock trials.”
The detainees include former top officials of Nagorno-Karabakh such as the former presidents Bako Sahakyan, Arkady Ghukasyan and Arayik Harutyunyan, as well as former State Minister Ruben Vardanyan. They were arrested after the 2023 Azeri offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh which resulted in the forced displacement of the region’s entire Armenian population of over 100,000.
The former officials are all facing fabricated charges in what many experts and officials have described as sham trials.
Vardanyan, whose case has been separated from the others, recently announced a hunger strike in protest of the sham trial. In a statement, he called on world leaders and the international community to interfere.
Vardanyan has vehemently denied all charges against him which include “financing terrorism” and “illegally entering” Karabakh. Vardanyan, as well as many experts, have described the charges as falsifications. The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo earlier slammed the charges as bogus, emphasizing that Baku is using the show trials to cover up its crimes in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Jared Genser, Vardanyan’s lawyer, recently said that his client’s health is in danger.
The Armenian Ombudsperson earlier called on all human rights organizations to intervene after receiving reports of torture and ill-treatment against the Armenian prisoners in the Azeri jail.
