In an interview with The Armenian Report published on Thursday, Jared Genser pointed to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s public statements on these and other Armenian prisoners whom he described as “hostages.”
“It doesn’t seem from what I’ve heard that bringing Ruben or others home is an especially high priority [for Pashinian’s government,]” he said. “That’s obviously frustrating and disappointing … because Ruben and the others are simply Armenian citizens. It’s the job of a government to help their citizens abroad when they are in harm’s way. In this particular case … there is no one but the government of Armenia to actually stand up for them and assist them.”
“It should be the Armenian government that’s asking governments around the world to secure the release of the political prisoners and POWs, and it doesn’t seem to be an especially high priority for them,” added Genser.
An Azerbaijani military court began the separate trials of Vardanyan and 15 other Karabakh Armenians on January 17. The defendants facing a long list of accusations include three former Karabakh presidents -- Arayik Harutiunian, Bako Sahakian and Arkadi Ghukasian. They all were captured by Azerbaijan during or shortly after its September 2023 military offensive that forced Karabakh’s entire population to flee to Armenia and restored Azerbaijani control over the region.
In contrast with an outpouring of support for the captives voiced by prominent public figures in Armenia and its worldwide Diaspora, the Armenian government has pointedly declined to condemn the trials. Nor has it officially reacted to them otherwise through the prime minister’s office or the Foreign Ministry. Armenian government critics have denounced its silence.
Pashinian described the trials as “concerning” when he answered a question from an opposition member of the parliament on Wednesday. He claimed that a stronger statement “satisfying your patriotic emotions” would only harm the Armenian prisoners. Opposition leaders continued to insist that Pashinian is simply afraid of angering Baku.
Pashinian was already accused by his domestic critics last fall of helping Baku legitimize Vardanyan’s continuing imprisonment with his scathing comments about the Armenian-born billionaire and philanthropist. Speaking during a news conference last August, the Armenian premier wondered who had told Vardanyan to renounce Russian citizenship and move to Karabakh in 2022 and “for what purpose.”
Pashinian seemed to echo Azerbaijani leaders’ earlier claims that Vardanyan, who briefly served as Karabakh premier in 2022-2023, was dispatched to Karabakh by Moscow to serve Russian interests there. Vardanyan hit back at him in a September statement issued via his family.
In another statement circulated by the family on the eve of his trial, the tycoon rejected 42 charges levelled against him as politically motivated and accused Azerbaijani authorities of attributing false testimony to him.
Genser, who has not been allowed to visit Azerbaijan to see his client, denounced the trials as a travesty of justice, saying that guilty verdicts in them are already “predetermined.” He claimed that the new U.S. administration of President Donald Trump will put strong pressure on the Azerbaijani government to free the Armenian captives.
“I do think that if [Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev thinks he is going to just do whatever he wants with no consequence, he is going to find something quite different happening in Washington,” the lawyer told The Armenian Report. “We’ve already begun talking to new administration officials about the current situation not just with respect to political prisoners and Ruben’s case but a broader situation of ethnic cleansing, the dismantling of the government institutions of Artsakh.”