Armenia and int’l community call on Azerbaijan to end mock trials of POWs

Armenia and the international community have called on Azerbaijan to release the Armenian POWs and other detainees, Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanyan has said.

Commenting on statements by Azeri officials calling for punishing participants of the Nagorno-Karabakh wars, Kostanyan said Baku is making such statement in order to overshadow the fake judicial process against Armenian prisoners.

“It’s being done to overshadow the ongoing legal processes taking place in Baku, which is hard to even call a legal process. Naturally, the international community and the Republic of Armenia are calling on Azerbaijan to end these processes and release our compatriots, and in response to this Azerbaijan is making such statements,” Kostanyan said. Commenting on Baku’s statements about ‘re-settling displaced Azerbaijanis’ in Armenia, Kostanyan said the would-be peace agreement doesn’t contain such terms, neither is there any such issue on Armenia’s agenda.

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.