Artsakh leaders in a Baku courtroom during their sham trial

Azerbaijan’s human rights commissioner, Sabina Aliyeva, last week said concerns raised by former Artsakh State Minister Ruben Vardanyan and other Armenians being held captive in Baku were “groundless.”

Vardanyan and the others had sounded the alarm on the manner in which they were being treated, as well as pointed to deteriorating health conditions. Vardanyan last week called for a meeting with Aliyeva as his wife, Veronika Zonabend, is spearheading an effort to head a delegation to Baku in order to visit with the Armenian captives.

Siranush Sahakyan, a human rights attorney who represents the Armenian captives in the European Court of Human Rights, responded to Aliyeva’s statement, saying that the Azerbaijani official’s “response is notable less for what it answers than for what it avoids.”

Sahakyan, who is currently visiting the United States, and specifically Los Angeles, said that Aliyeva had failed to respond to concerns voiced by the prisoners regarding their inability to hold video calls with relatives and visits from family members, access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as Zonabend’s appeal for organizing the humanitarian delegation.

“The silence on family visits and on the proposed humanitarian visit is telling. The Office asserts that family contact is ensured. Not a single family visit has taken place since the prisoners were detained. The only contact that exists is by telephone, and not for every prisoner. Requests for assistance with Veronika Zonabend’s visit were submitted to the Commissioner’s Office in June and July. They remain unanswered. Meanwhile, Azerbaijani media have openly suggested that she could be arrested if she comes to Baku. That is what ‘family contact is ensured’ means in practice,” Sahakyan said.

“Where the Commissioner’s version conflicts with the facts reported by Vardanyan, documentation is conspicuously absent. The Office states that every call to the 916 hotline received a timely response. Vardanyan was permitted one such call, on June 19. No record of any response has been produced. Nor has the Office produced substantive replies to the written submissions made on his behalf,” the attorney added.

“If weekly calls are genuinely available to every prisoner, why does Lyudvig Mkrtchyan wait one and a half to more than two months between calls? The telephone logs can answer that question immediately,” Sahakyan explained.

“The same pattern applies to access to counsel. Vardanyan’s local lawyer has repeatedly been denied access to him. On September 16, access was refused because the head of the facility was absent. On 19 September, the Commissioner announced that prisoners’ rights were being ensured. On 22 September, counsel was denied access again on the same ground. The matter has therefore had to go to court: a claim has been filed against the prison administration over the denial of access,” Sahakyan pointed out.

“The Commissioner also relies heavily on visits carried out by her Office. Yet the uncomfortable irony is that the very institution invoking those visits as proof of effective oversight has already been criticized by the UN Committee against Torture for having ‘not effectively carried out its functions’ in responding to credible allegations of serious violations — a failure the Committee said ‘reflects a lack of independence,’” the rights attorney said.

“If Ruben Vardanyan’s allegations are truly ‘groundless,’ the answer is straightforward: produce the records for every Armenian prisoner held at Umbaki – records of family visits, records of consular access, telephone logs, written replies to their submissions, notarial records, and records of access to independent counsel. A categorical denial, however emphatic, is not evidence of fact,” Sahakyan asserted.