Illegally held Armenian hostage Ruben Vardanyan is preparing to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) after his legal team obtained a copy of the court verdict required to launch proceedings against Azerbaijan.
The former Artsakh State Minister and philanthropist has been illegally held hostage in Azerbaijan since his abduction at the Berdzor Corridor checkpoint in September 2023. Earlier this year, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison following proceedings widely condemned as politically motivated and lacking due process.
Human rights lawyer Siranush Sahakyan told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the application will be be filed within the coming weeks.
“We are in the preparatory stage. The case will be filed within the coming weeks,” she said.
“We will demonstrate that the prosecution is political. Ruben Vardanyan never committed any individual criminal act. The collective right to self determination was unlawfully classified as terrorism,” Sahakyan said.
She also said Azerbaijan continues to withhold the written verdicts of the other 15 Armenian hostages, including Artsakh’s former political and military leadership, preventing them and their lawyers from reviewing the court’s reasoning or preparing appeals.
According to Sahakyan, Azerbaijan is deliberately withholding the verdicts to obstruct international legal proceedings and the decisions themselves may not even be finalized because the outcomes of the trials were predetermined.
The ECHR has ordered Azerbaijan to submit the written verdicts of the 15 Armenian hostages to the Court by August 31.
“If they fail to provide them even to the European Court, we will be dealing with a new category of human rights violations,” Sahakyan said.
