RASMUS CANBÄCK
Blankspot.se
It was late in the evening on 9 November 2020 when news
broke that the war in Nagorno-Karabakh had come to an end. At the time, Vicken Euljekjian, an Armenian-Lebanese citizen who had
emigrated to the breakaway region, was in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan.
His home near the town of Shushi — known as Shusha in
Azerbaijani — was about to fall under Azerbaijani control. He believed he had
until 1 December to clear out his belongings.
What he did not realize was that the village where his
house was located was not covered by that timetable. Hoping to salvage as much
as possible, he returned home with his friend Maral. It proved a costly
mistake. Azerbaijani troops detained them both and quickly separated them.
The next day, the beatings began.
“First they hit my right ear. Then the back of my neck.
The blows were so hard that my ears started ringing,” Euljekjian recalls.
Only later did he realize that he was being held at a
detention facility in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku.
“Since then, I have had hearing problems. I have lost
between 40 and 50 percent of my hearing in both ears. My spine was damaged so
badly that I now need support around my neck to hold my head upright.”
We meet at a café in Yerevan. Two childhood friends from
Lebanon accompany him, having travelled to Armenia to support him. He leans
forward as far as his neck brace allows in order to hear the questions. He
repeats them to make sure he has understood them correctly.
During the final period of his imprisonment, he was
confined to a wheelchair. At least he no longer needs it, but moving quickly
remains difficult.
Released on 14 January this year, Euljekjian spent a
total of 1,891 days — five years and two months — in Azerbaijani custody. His
friend Maral was released just a few months after the arrest.
Today, his medical treatment is being financed through
donations, support from friends, and assistance from an opposition political
party.
“There is both a lot and very little to say about my time
in Azerbaijan,” Vicken Euljekjian says.
Prison, he explains, is monotonous. Every day resembles
the last. The memories that remain most vivid come from the first seven months
of his captivity, when he was awaiting trial. At the time, he was being held at
a State Security Service detention facility in Baku, not far from the city’s
iconic Flame Towers.
“For about 20 days, the Red Cross managed to arrange for
me to share a cell with another Armenian prisoner. It was the only time during
those years that I was not alone. I had started hallucinating. I saw my mother
in dreams. But it did not last long.”
The arrangement ended, he says, because Azerbaijani
investigators had come to view him as a Lebanese terrorist.
A Lebanese terrorist?
“Yes. When they captured me, I gave them my Armenian passport.
Somehow they looked into my background and discovered that I was from Lebanon.
I confirmed it. Then they told me they would charge me as a Lebanese
mercenary.”
Euljekjian says he tried to explain that his family were
descendants of survivors of the Armenian Genocide.
“I told them, ‘I am Armenian by blood. My grandparents survived
the genocide of 1915.’”
There are currently more than 250 political prisoners in
Azerbaijan. Armenian detainees are rarely included in these counts. Today, an
estimated 19 Armenians remain in Azerbaijani custody.
According to him, the investigator responded that he had
never seen an Armenian passport.
“I had handed it to him only minutes earlier. It was
lying on the desk in front of him. But he repeated that he had never seen it
and locked it away in a safe. It was as if the passport had been erased from
existence.”
Soon afterwards, he says, he learned that the authorities
intended to film a video portraying him as a foreign mercenary. Because he
already understood Turkish, which is closely related to Azerbaijani, he could
follow much of what was being said.
“They accused me of receiving $2,500 a month from the
Armenian government. At that point I gave up. I told them: ‘OK, do whatever you
want.’ I understood that they were not interested in the truth.”
He nevertheless attempted to defend himself during the
trial.
“But it felt as though the verdict had already been
decided. The whole thing was theatre. You can talk until dawn and try to defend
yourself, but in the end it changes nothing.”
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and transferred to
Gobustan Prison, a high-security facility around 50 kilometres southwest of
Baku.
Just beyond the prison walls lie the famous Gobustan rock
carvings, a popular tourist attraction. Inside, however, was a very different
reality.
For decades, the prison has been criticized
internationally for poor conditions. In its most isolated section, in a small
cell with the number 85 on the door, the third cell from the eastern flank of
the building, where he would spend the next four years, Euljekjian lived
entirely alone.
When asked whether he was allowed to leave his cell, he
looks surprised.
“Leave the cell? No.”
Not once?
“No. Never.”
The cell measured roughly two and a half by four metres.
A small window near the ceiling allowed in some daylight.
“You have to understand how bad it was,” he says. “The
air was humid – suffocating. In summer the heat was unbearable. There were mice
everywhere. It was the worst place you can imagine.”
The loneliness set in quickly.
He imagined cracks in the walls widening into escape
routes. Perhaps the damp damage would soften the concrete. He pictured life
beyond the prison walls: tourists visiting the nearby rock carvings, his family
gathering for dinners without him.
The sense of loss deepened as one piece of bad news
followed another. One by one, people close to him died, and he was unable to
attend their funerals.
First, his father passed away. Then his brother. When his
mother died as well, without him having the chance to say goodbye, it felt as
though the walls were closing in around him. He tried to remember the last
words he had spoken to them. He hoped they had been something positive.
Outside the prison, his wife Linda struggled to keep the
family together. His late brother’s children moved in with her. Both children
of Vicken and Linda were forced to abandon their studies to help earn enough money
for the family to survive.
“A large part of my time in prison was spent imagining
that I was helping my family, making sure there was food on the table,” he says.
“It was a very difficult situation for my wife. All the bills that had to be
paid.”
For him, imagination became a routine.
Every small detail he learned about life on the outside
was woven into an imagined world in which he could still participate. When he
closed his eyes, he let conversations between family members play out in his
mind. He thought about what he would have said at the funerals. He
reconstructed the scenes, over and over again, inside his head.
Could you communicate with other prisoners?
“I need to repeat this: it was the worst place. I could
not speak to anyone. Other inmates at different quarters had access to a yard
where they could walk. We who were having a life sentence had nothing like
that.”
His gaze shifts for the first time during our conversation.
Tears begin to form.
The water, he says, was green. The food was barely
edible.
“Usually it was some mixture of pasta, buckwheat and
flour with boiling water poured over it. The bread was the only thing I could
eat.”
When representatives of the International Committee of
the Red Cross visited, he repeatedly asked them for one thing.
“Water. That was all I wanted.”
The delegates were foreign staff members working with the
ICRC mission in Azerbaijan.
How often did they visit?
“According to the rules, about once a month. In reality,
every 40 or 45 days. Maybe nine times a year.”
During the visits, he was allowed to speak with family
members for two minutes.
“After four years, even that changed. We could no longer
communicate through Red Cross channels and instead had to use a government
telephone.”
Was that your only human contact?
“Yes. And they were only allowed into my cell. I was
never allowed out.”
The visitors usually brought tomatoes and cucumbers.
Occasionally, a tube of melted cheese.
“I asked for more cheese so I could put it on the bread,
but they said it was not permitted. Once they brought me a cabbage. I marinated
it in salt water and tried to preserve it. After that I was not allowed cabbage
again.”
He also asked whether they could bring sausage or other
protein-rich food.
“The prison governor claimed it might spoil. I told him I
would eat it immediately. It made no difference.”
Eventually, Euljekjian told the ICRC delegates that there
was little point in visiting him.
“Three tomatoes and two cucumbers were not worth it.”
Yet the visits continued.
“They would not listen to me, so I kept eating their
tomatoes,” he says with a faint smile.
“As a foreigner, I had nobody to stand up for my rights.
Whenever I complained to the Red Cross, they referred me to the prison
administration. When I complained to the prison administration, they referred
me back to the Red Cross.”
According to Euljekjian, Azerbaijani prisoners enjoyed
significantly better conditions. Their families could visit more frequently and
many cells contained refrigerators.
What kept you alive?
“There was only one thing: the idea that I might eventually
get out.”
And a Bible.
“That was the only book I had. I brought it with me.
There were some Russian books in the prison, but I do not speak Russian.”
By late 2025, he began to sense that something might be
changing. During one visit from ICRC on Christmas day, he learned that discussions
were taking place about his deteriorating health.
The injuries he says he sustained during the first days
of detention had worsened to the point where he needed a wheelchair. Without
adequate medical care, walking had become increasingly difficult.
Before dawn on 14 January 2026, guards suddenly woke him.
“They told me to pack my things.”
He protested.
“I asked them to at least wait until sunrise so I could
see what I was packing.”
The guards refused.
“I wanted to know the truth. If I was being transferred
to another prison, I needed to think about what to take with me. If I was going
home, I would need nothing.”
Eventually, prison officials told him that he was being released.
“I said, ‘Then I do not need anything at all.’”
He smiles.
“But they suggested I at least put on my shoes.”
He was taken to the Lachin Corridor, the road that
between 2020 and 2023 served as the only connection between Armenia and
Nagorno-Karabakh. The route became internationally known after it was blocked
for nine months before Azerbaijan’s September 2023 offensive, which triggered
the mass exodus of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians from the region.
Together with three other Armenian detainees — Gevorg
Sujyan, Davit Davtyan, and Vagif Khachatryan — he was handed over to Armenian
authorities.
Unlike the others, who had family in Armenia, Euljekjian
had spent most of his life in Lebanon. Upon arrival, he was taken directly to
hospital. He was allowed to stay longer than needed, while finding a solution
for accommodation.
Since then, he says, he has received support from the
opposition party Armenian Revolutionary Federation and from members of the
party’s Lebanese branch. They also helped pay for airline tickets for his wife,
Linda, who had, throughout the years, fought hard to raise awareness of her
husband’s case.
What was it like seeing your family again?
“Almost six years had passed since I last saw my
daughter. It took another four months after my release before she could come
here. We simply did not have the money.”
He pauses.
“Seeing her again is the best thing that has happened to
me. She was a teenager when I was captured. Now she is 24.”
How has prison changed you?
“I would never allow it to change me,” he says. “I am
still the same person I was before.”