The trumped up criminal case against former Artsakh State Minister Ruben Vardanyan, who was captured by Azerbaijani forces soon after the September, 2023 attack on Artsakh, has been moved to the Baku Military court.
Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General’s office announced the decision on Monday.
Vardanyan has been charged under several serious articles related to Azerbaijan’s “national security” and faces life imprisonment. His lawyer, Jared Genser, stated that the charges are entirely politically motivated and are aimed at taking revenge on the people of Nagorno-Karabakh and their leaders.
“These charges represent a flagrant violation of Azerbaijan’s obligations under international law,” Genser said earlier this month when Azerbaijani prosecutor tacked on more than 45 new charges to his case.
The new charges presented against Vardanyan fall under 20 different articles of Azerbaijan’s Criminal Code. Illustrating the extent to which the regime is desperate to justify its ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh and illegal imprisonment of its former leaders, the fabricated evidence is presented in more than 25,000 pages across 100 volumes, all written in Azeri.
The alleged evidence is conveniently hidden both from Vardanyan’s and public view, based on claims the charges relate to the “national security of Azerbaijan.”
“The laundry list of charges—a transparently brazen attempt to blame everything that the Azeri regime did in Nagorno-Karabakh on Ruben—in addition to Azerbaijan’s refusal to provide and make public all of the charges and so-called evidence against Ruben for review, reaffirms that the charges are politically motivated and that the regime knows no objective observer would conclude there is any credible evidence to support its allegations. This approach is clearly designed for Aliyev to justify holding a secret trial before a tribunal that will be neither independent nor impartial,” Genser added.
