01/16/2025
Azerbaijan: Trial begins against unlawfully detained Armenians from Artsakh
Human rights activists call for trial monitoring
On January 17, the Azerbaijani capital Baku will begin the trials of 16 people who were unlawfully detained by Azerbaijan in the wake of the September 2023 attack on Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). Several German human rights organizations are warning of a politically motivated show trial and calling for German embassy staff to observe the proceedings. A total of 23 people from Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh who were arrested after the expulsion in 2023 are in detention in Azerbaijan.
“The accused are civilians, including eight democratically elected leaders. By imprisoning them and criminalizing them in court, Azerbaijan is turning victims into perpetrators and concealing its own crime against Artsakh,” criticizes Sarah Reinke, head of human rights work at the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) in Göttingen. Together with the Central Council of Armenians in Germany (ZAD), the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) and the Working Group on Recognition, against Genocide, for International Understanding (AGA), the Society for Threatened Peoples demands that these politically motivated trials must be observed by German embassy staff.
In September 2023, Azerbaijan attacked Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh by force, 100,000 Armenians were displaced. This was preceded by a nine-month blockade of the de facto Republic of Artsakh in violation of orders from the International Court of Justice. Human rights organizations and international lawyer Luis Moreno Ocampo have deemed both the blockade and the expulsion to be acts of genocide. Instead of holding those responsible in Azerbaijan, above all President Ilham Aliyev, accountable for this crime before an international court, a show trial against Armenians is now being staged in Baku, explain the spokespeople for the NGOs. Politics is influencing the Azerbaijani judiciary, which is characterized by systematic corruption and violations of internationally recognized rights. Judges are often expected to reflect the interests of the government in their rulings, and members of the political opposition, journalists and activists are repeatedly experiencing this first hand, they explain further.
The German government did not call out Azerbaijan in 2023 when the Armenians were being displaced on a massive scale, but instead maintained its relations with dictator Aliyev during and after the event as if nothing had happened. Now it is only right and proper that at least these trials be observed and that pressure be put on for the immediate release of those concerned, the human rights organizations appeal to the Foreign Office in Berlin.
You can reach Sarah Reinke of the STP at s.reinke@gfbv.de or +49 551/49906-13.
You can reach Dr. Tessa Hofmann of the AGA at tessa.hofmann@katwastan.de or +49 30/ 851 64 09.
You can contact Valerio Krüger from the ISHR at presse@igfm.de or +49 69-420 108-11.
You can contact Jonathan Spangenberg from the ZAD at vorstand@zentralrat.org.
*Correction: We had initially written that the trials of all 23 people from Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh arrested after the expulsion in 2023 would begin on January 17. However, only the trials of 16 of the 23 arrested persons who are currently in Azerbaijani custody will begin.