The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture has visited Azerbaijan, possibly also Armenian prisoners

The fate of the prisoners, the closure of the ICRC in Azerbaijan and its dangerous consequences, international mechanisms for visiting prisoners, Armenia’s policy on this issue, the refusal of interstate complaints, and a number of other issues were discussed today at a public discussion organized by Civilnet.

The speakers of the discussion entitled "The Problem of Baku Prisoners: Human Rights and Politics" were Siranush Sahakyan, head of the Center for International Comparative Law, Yeghishe Kirakosyan, head of the YSU International Courts and Arbitration Master's Program, and Anna Melikyan, expert of the NGO "Protection of Rights without Borders".

Siranush Sahakyan once again noted that the official number of Armenian prisoners held in Azerbaijan is 23, meaning that they are known, there is verifiable information about their survival, "however, this does not mean at all that only 23 Armenians were initially captured and are being held in Azerbaijan."

"Unfortunately, there have been developments that reveal war crimes, in particular, the murders of prisoners, in such episodes when the body of an already shot prisoner was handed over to the Armenian side, and in this regard there is combined evidence: on the one hand, about being captured in Azerbaijan, on the other hand, the murdered body is already under the control of the Armenian side, and secondly, the prisoners simply forcibly disappeared. In other words, certain developments took place in the period following the capture, due to which we have lost information about these persons."

In this regard, the Azerbaijani side has a denialist approach, denies its connection with the forcibly disappeared prisoners and refuses to provide information. In such uncertain conditions, there is also no independent international organization that, as a result of search, tracing or other operations, could identify the wanted forcibly disappeared prisoners, check if they are alive and provide information about their survival.

Speaking about the activities of the Red Cross, Sahakyan recalled that the international committee last visited the Armenian hostages in June, after which access has been blocked. At the moment, according to the human rights defender, there is no neutral international independent organization that could visit the Armenians and find out their real situation through direct observations, and the information received is one-sided, fragmentary and unverifiable. “At the moment, we have information that the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture has visited Azerbaijan. We do not exclude that it may have had one-time meetings with some Armenians within the framework of the visits. We will refrain from providing details at this time, but we will make a statement on this issue in the future,” said Sahakyan.

Speaking about the peace agreement signed with Azerbaijan, Anna Melikyan, an expert from the NGO “Protection of Rights Without Borders”, expressed serious concern that it does not contain any provisions that would regulate the immediate return of prisoners. “Moreover, after August 8, the statements of high-ranking Armenian officials have addressed this issue much more limitedly, and we consider the last two opportunities that the Prime Minister of Armenia had to address this issue in the UN and PACE to be missed, and perhaps even a deliberately missed opportunity to address this issue. The Prime Minister used only half a sentence, saying that the issue of those held in custody should be addressed,” Melikyan noted. And what is meant by that, do we demand the return of these persons, do we just want to record that they are being held in custody and are being tried, or do we have nothing to demand? Anna Melikyan does not have the answers to these questions.

Speaking about the possible withdrawal of the claims of international instances, Yeghishe Kirakosyan expressed hope that international judicial processes will continue, because they contain very important security guarantees, first of all, also from the point of view of protecting the rights of detained persons.

“I don’t think that we should be naive and expect that as soon as the decision is made, the whole picture will suddenly change by a miracle, within days or months, and the decision will be fully implemented. No, unfortunately, that will not be the case. But does this mean that judicial processes are meaningless in general? No. I think that even for countries with similar content, international judicial processes have a clear impact, they certainly affect the behavior of the state, limit the scope of the state’s actions, create additional bonds in political, reputational and many other aspects, which are important in the long term, and in this regard, it is also important that the process of following up on the decisions made by international courts be continuous,” said Kirakosyan.

In response to the journalist’s question, Sahakyan also touched upon the terms used, for example, the phrase “person held in custody.” According to Sahakyan, “person held in custody” is a fairly neutral and comprehensive, inclusive concept and could be used to describe the general situation from a high podium, and it also includes political prisoners. He noted that the former leadership of Artsakh is not a prisoner of war or a civilian prisoner, in the sense that they appeared in the zone of hostilities and, as a result, are not captives. They are persons sought by the political authorities of Azerbaijan, who should have been subjected to a demonstrative punishment for exercising Artsakh’s right to self-determination, acting on behalf of Artsakh, and other actions.

“I see a fundamental problem here, related to the nature of things. For example, all persons detained or convicted and serving a legal sentence in the Republic of Armenia are persons held in custody. In this regard, shouldn't we have spoken about the nature of the deprivation of liberty of those held in Baku, boldly stating that their deprivation of liberty is illegal? And this is the demand that the international community, the authorities of the Republic of Armenia, and the society of the Republic of Armenia should demand the immediate release of those illegally deprived of liberty, and, I think, this important legal qualification should also have been given from the political podium. Failure to do this causes us perplexity," said Sahakyan.

You can find the full version of the discussion here: