Convicted businessman Ruben Vardanyan asks Azerbaijani Ombudsman to meet

Former NKR state minister and former Russian businessman Ruben Vardanyan, who was sentenced to 20 years in Baku, urged the Azerbaijani ombudsman Sabina Aliyeva to meet with Armenian prisoners. In his address to her, he drew attention to "violations that contradict primarily the legislation of Azerbaijan.".

“The lack of weekly phone calls and the inaccessibility of video communication, due to which some have not seen their children for almost three years; the inability to pass medical tests even at their own expense; the inability to issue a power of attorney for relatives due to denial of notarial services; the restriction of physical activities to 20-40 minutes once a week instead of the prescribed hour a day; the lack of written answers to applications and complaints,” Ruben Vardanyan listed.

He also stressed that after the termination of the work of the International Committee of the Red Cross, prisoners have lost contact with their families, most do not receive parcels and cannot make calls.

Ruben Vardanyan, in a March appeal to Sabina Aliyeva, asked for help in obtaining the full text of his sentence, since he still does not know under what articles he was convicted. The Ombudsman’s office said that she personally visited the places of detention of Armenian citizens, including Mr. Vardanyan. Violations of the conditions of their detention or at the stages of the investigation, the apparatus did not find.

On February 17, the Baku Military Court sentenced Ruben Vardanyan on charges of financing terrorism, creating illegal armed groups, planning and waging an aggressive war and dozens of other counts. Azerbaijani security forces detained Ruben Vardanyan on September 27, 2023, when he was going to leave Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia due to the Azerbaijani military operation.

Lucine Balasian