Vardanyan’s American lawyer, Jared Genser, said on Wednesday, that his client “on several occasions came close to passing out.”
Azerbaijani state media reported that the hearing was briefly interrupted as a result and resumed after a doctor examined Vardanyan’s condition. According to them, he refused to answer questions from Azerbaijani prosecutors during the court hearing.
One of the questions was about Vardanyan’s alleged ties to Armenia’s Nagorno-Karabakh-born former Presidents Serzh Sarkisian and Robert Kocharian. The latter are accused by Azerbaijani authorities of complicity in grave crimes attributed by them to Vardanyan and seven other former Karabakh leaders captured by Baku right after its September 2023 military offensive.
In a statement, Genser expressed serious concern about his client’s “deteriorating health,” urging Baku to “postpone the trial through the remainder of his hunger strike.”
“To compel Ruben to participate in this proceeding while facing serious threats to his health and safety at a minimum constitutes cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment,” read the statement. “I urge international organizations with access to Azerbaijan prisoners to request access to Ruben on an urgent basis.”
“I also call on world leaders, especially Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, to condemn the show-trial against Ruben as politically motivated and unlawful,” added the human rights lawyer who has not been allowed to visit Azerbaijan.
An Azerbaijani military court began the separate trials of Vardanyan and the seven other former Karabakh leaders on January 17. They are facing a long list of charges, including genocide and war crimes.
Vardanyan, who held the second-highest post in Karabakh’ leadership from November 2022 to February 2023, strongly denies the accusations. He announced his hunger strike in a statement issued via his family in Armenia on February 19. He denounced his trial as a “political show” accompanied by “egregious due process abuses.”
After weeks of effective silence condemned by its domestic critics, the Armenian government criticized on Monday the “mock trials” through Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan. Pashinian claimed earlier that explicit condemnation would only harm the defendants.
Pashinian’s detractors insisted that he is simply afraid of angering Baku. Genser complained late last month that the Armenian government is doing little to try to secure the release of the Armenian prisoners.
Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday that its representatives were allowed to again visit this month all 23 Armenians known to remain in Azerbaijani captivity. It did not specify whether they saw Vardanyan before or after the announcement of his hunger strike.
“The meetings were conducted according to ICRC procedures, meaning that our focus was on their health conditions, their conditions of detention and the treatment they received,” Zara Amatuni, the ICRC spokeswoman in Yerevan, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “And during the private meetings, as usual, everyone was given the opportunity to contact their relatives [by phone.]”