Former Nagorno-Karabakh Prime Minister Faces Life in Prison Over New Charges
The former state minister of Nagorno-Karabakh, businessman Ruben Vardanyan, is facing a life sentence after being held in Azerbaijani captivity for more than a year. Vardanyan’s lawyers said that Azerbaijani prosecutors have filed about 45 new potential charges against him.
“The new charges brought against Ruben Vardanyan fall under 20 different articles of the Azerbaijani Criminal Code. Illustrating how desperate the regime is to justify its ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and the illegal imprisonment of its former leaders, the fabricated evidence runs to more than 25,000 pages in 100 volumes, all written in Azerbaijani. The alleged evidence is conveniently hidden from both Ruben and the public because the charges allegedly concern “the national security of Azerbaijan,” the Free Armenian Prisoners movement stated.
It is noted that Vardanyan and his defense attorneys have not been provided with copies of the materials – they are available for viewing only for a limited time and without proper translation.
The Vardanyan family’s international legal advisor, Jared Genser, called the charges brought against his client “a flagrant violation of Azerbaijan’s obligations under international law” and “a brazen attempt to blame Ruben for everything the Azerbaijani regime has done in Nagorno-Karabakh.” He is convinced that the charges are baseless and politically motivated, as evidenced by Azerbaijan’s refusal to provide evidence for their objective consideration. According to Genser, the purpose of these actions is to justify a closed trial that will be unfair and completely dependent on the Aliyev regime. Ruben’s family, in turn, calls on the democratic world to show that such violations are no longer acceptable and to ensure the presence of international organizations and media in court.
“The latest charges against my father are a travesty of justice and retribution for the failures of COP29 to an innocent scapegoat. Ruben Vardanyan served as the State Minister of Nagorno-Karabakh for three months, where he sought to improve the lives of citizens through meaningful social programs. Unfortunately, he was rewarded with the threat of life imprisonment by one of the most corrupt regimes on earth. His arrest and these new false charges are a symbol for all Armenians around the world that no one is safe. It has been more than two years since our family last saw Ruben. We fear that we will not be able to see him again unless the democratic world takes action to put an end to this nonsense,” shared the philanthropist’s son, David Vardanyan.
Recall that Ruben Vardanyan served as the State Minister of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic from November 2022 to February 2023. On September 28, 2023, he was captured by the Azerbaijani side at an illegal checkpoint established in the Lachin corridor during the mass exodus of Armenians from the NKR after a 10-month Azerbaijani blockade. The former Karabakh leader is currently being held in a Baku prison in conditions that violate international standards.
Baku officially confirms the fact that only 33 Armenian prisoners are being held, but Armenian human rights activists claim another 80. Along with Ruben Vardanyan, former presidents of the NRK Bako Sahakyan and Arkady Ghukasyan, former speaker of parliament David Ishkhanyan, former foreign minister and former presidential aide David Babayan, etc. are in Azerbaijani captivity.
Ruben Vardanyan is a figure that causes a lot of discussion, both in Azerbaijan and Armenia. So, when in 2022 he renounced his Russian citizenship and moved to Nagorno-Karabakh, both republics did not believe in the sincerity of this step. In Azerbaijan, they assumed that the billionaire who suddenly appeared from Russia was an attempt by Moscow to intervene in the situation.
“He was sent there from Moscow with a very clear agenda,” the President of Azerbaijan voiced his categorical opinion.
In October 2022, Aliyev stated that Azerbaijan was ready to negotiate “with the Armenians living in Karabakh, but not with people like Vardanyan, sent by Moscow, who has billions in his pockets stolen from the Russian people.”
