Ex-Karabakh leader held by Azerbaijan files legal action over torture

PanARMENIAN.Net - Lawyers for Ruben Vardanyan, a former top official in Nagorno-Karabakh who is now detained in Azerbaijan, on Thursday, October 3 filed legal actions in Baku over being tortured and denied the right to a speedy trial, Reuters reports.

Azerbaijani officials declined to comment on the lawsuits.

Vardanyan was arrested and jailed along with several other top Karabakh officials following a lightning offensive by Baku's forces in September 2023 to capture Nagorno-Karabakh, part of Azerbaijan that had been under the control of its ethnic Armenian population since the early 1990s.

In a statement, Vardanyan's lawyers said one of the cases related to treatment that constituted torture during a hunger strike he mounted in April 2024.

They said that in response Vardanyan was placed in a punishment cell, forced to stand, forbidden to bathe, and deprived of water for two days.

In another action, Vardanyan's lawyers said that his right to a speedy trial had been violated by his detention since last year. A separate lawsuit accuses a Russian-language Azerbaijani newspaper, the Baku Worker, of defaming Vardanyan.

Baku is gearing up to host the COP29 climate change conference in November. In the run-up to the event, it is expected to face increased scrutiny of its human rights record, including the jailing of journalists and activists which has drawn concern from the United States and the European Union.

Virtually all of Nagorno-Karabakh’s 115,000 ethnic Armenians have been forcibly displaced by Azerbaijan.