Baku: Armenian captive sentenced to 20 years in jail

Baku: Armenian captive sentenced to 20 years in jail

PanARMENIAN.Net - A court in Baku has handed a 20-year jail term to Viken Euljekjian, an Armenian captive and a citizen of Lebanon illegally detained in Azerbaijan.

He was charged under the articles "mercenary activity", "terrorism", "illegal border crossing." Euljekjian, however, did not plead guilty on Monday, June 14, revealing that he had testified under pressure.

A resident of Beirut, Vicken considered emigrating to Armenia and applied for citizenship in 2017, while retaining his Lebanese citizenship by birth. Vicken moved permanently to Yerevan in November 2019 with the intention of starting a business. He eventually bought a car and worked as a driver, taking tourists and visitors on tours. Alongside hundreds of Armenian families from Lebanon, he was vowed accommodation in the town of Shushi in Nagorno Karabakh by the Diaspora High Commission.

These dreams were shattered when the war against Artsakh was launched unexpectedly by Azerbaijan. Unaware that the city had already been taken over, Vicken was captured the day after the ceasefire agreement near Shushi. On 10 November 2020, with Maral Najarian, Vicken drove to Shushi in Nagorno Karabakh, to collect his belongings from his Shushi hotel before the handover of the town to Azerbaijan. They were stopped by Azeri forces and transferred to Baku in a bus with many other Armenian captives, civilians and soldiers. Maral Najarian was released in March 2021, whereas Vicken remains in captivity.

Azerbaijan is refusing to return all Armenian prisoners of war, in violation of the statement on the cessation of hostilities signed by the parties in November 2020. The Armenian side has information about some 200 Armenians still in Azerbaijan’s captivity, but Azeri President Ilham Aliyev claims that persons being kept in Baku are not PoWs, but “terrorists and saboteurs”. At least 19 of the hundreds of Armenian captives have been tortured and killed, according to their lawyers. In addition, six Armenian troops were captured on Armenian soil in late May.

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