TBILISI: Attorneys for Ruben Vardanyan, a former prime official within the ethnic Armenian administration of Nagorno-Karabakh who’s now detained in Azerbaijan, on Thursday (Oct 3) filed authorized actions in Baku alleging he had been tortured and denied the fitting to a speedy trial.
Azerbaijani officers declined to touch upon the lawsuits.
Vardanyan was arrested and jailed together with a number of different prime Karabakh officers following a lightning offensive by Baku’s forces in September 2023 to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, a part of Azerbaijan that had been underneath the management of its ethnic Armenian inhabitants because the early Nineteen Nineties.
In a press release, Vardanyan’s legal professionals mentioned one of many circumstances associated to therapy that constituted torture throughout a starvation strike he mounted in April 2024.
They mentioned that in response Vardanyan was positioned in a punishment cell, pressured to face, forbidden to wash, and disadvantaged of water for 2 days.
In one other motion, Vardanyan’s legal professionals mentioned that his proper to a speedy trial had been violated by his detention since final yr. A separate lawsuit accuses a Russian-language Azerbaijani newspaper, the Baku Employee, of defaming Vardanyan.
Baku is gearing as much as host the COP29 local weather change convention in November. Within the run-up to the occasion, it’s anticipated to face elevated scrutiny of its human rights file, together with the jailing of journalists and activists which has drawn concern from america and the European Union.
Its army victory in Karabakh final yr introduced an finish to a separatist battle that had begun earlier than the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.
Nearly the entire territory’s 100,000 or so ethnic Armenians have now fled to Armenia, whereas some ethnic Azeris, lots of of 1000’s of whom had beforehand fled houses in and round Karabakh, have returned.
Within the assertion, Vardanyan’s legal professionals urged Azerbaijan to launch all Karabakh Armenian prisoners held within the nation earlier than the summit begins.
A billionaire banker who was born in Armenia earlier than making his fortune in Russia, Vardanyan moved to Nagorno-Karabakh in 2022, and was appointed to the number-two place within the breakaway area’s authorities shortly after.
He resigned from authorities in February 2023, throughout a ten-month blockade of the territory by Azerbaijan.
