Azerbaijan has launched an illegal prosecution of two servicemen captured in May. In May, the Azerbaijani forces captured six Armenian servicemen in the Gegharkunik province and later returned four of them. The preliminary court session on the criminal case initiated against Sargsyan and Rafaelyan took place in one of the Baku courts. Azerbaijan accuses them of attempting to commit terrorism with the use of firearms. Armenia applied to the European Court of Human Rights on May 27 to demand the fundamental rights of six captured Armenian servicemen.
Liparit Drmeyan (Head of the Office of the Representative of the Republic of Armenia to the European Court of Human Rights) - The court reaffirmed its decision made in November 2020, according to which any person, whether a serviceman or a civilian, who will come under the rule of Azerbaijan, all rights are subject to protection, guarantee, protection by convention.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan, despite the urgings and demands of respectable international human rights organizations, continues to resort to blatant falsifications, to file fake criminal cases against Armenians captured in non-war situation, presenting them as terrorists.
Liparit Drmeyan - In fact, from the point of view of the essence of the problem, it does not matter, it aggravates or worsens the situation in Azerbaijan within the framework of the ECHR processes, because all these processes are formal in nature. They already violate a number of rights protected by the European Convention, in particular the right to a fair trial, and we have presented those facts. We will present any new developments regarding the prisoners of war in these trials to the ECHR.
Forty of those captured since the 2020 war have been sentenced and are being held in Azerbaijan. In addition to them, Baku is actually launching a fake criminal case against the two. More than 100 captives were repatriated after the war. Among them were people who had been convicted. According to the head of the office of the Armenian representative to the ECHR, Azerbaijan wants to take this step from a supposedly humanitarian position, presenting that it even returns criminals. According to Drmeyan, that staging will work against them. No rights of prisoners are protected during trials.
Liparit Drmeyan - Violation of the Convention has been clearly registered, we do not have information on the scope of the accusation, what investigative actions have been carried out, that there is no information, they are isolated, they cannot use the right of a lawyer. To say that he is a criminal, we sentence, it is absurd, the fact is presented to the European Court, we are sure, there is every chance that the Court will recognize the violation.
The Armenian side will demand that the trials be recognized as illegal and that Azerbaijan will compensate for the violated rights of individuals.
