“We have been told that their freedom needs to be a precondition for President Trump to ultimately bless a peace deal [between Armenia and Azerbaijan,]” Jared Genser told Catholic News Agency (CNA) in an interview published late on Thursday.
“I think that’s a really important development because our biggest fear all along has been that if a peace deal were to proceed, and there was no resolution of Nagorno-Karabakh or of the Armenian Christian POWs, then unfortunately, it could lead to a sacrificing of those prisoners as a part of the peace deal,” he said.
Genser said the Trump administration is in a position to get Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to free all 23 Armenian captives held in Azerbaijan.
“At the end of the day, dictators only release political prisoners when they have to,” added the prominent human rights lawyer.
Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, urged Baku to “release the prisoners” on March 16 in an X post that welcomed major progress made in Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks.
Walz’s call contrasted with the U.S. State Department’s comments on the issue cited by CNA: “We continue to monitor the situation closely through our embassies in the region. All those detained should have their human rights respected and, if criminally charged, have all fair trial guarantees afforded to them.”
Like Armenian opposition leaders and other domestic critics of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, Genser has repeatedly accused Yerevan of doing little to try to secure the release of the prisoners. Pashinian has said that his government will make only “proportionate” and “reasonable” efforts for that purpose. Pashinian has also claimed that Yerevan will harm the prisoners if it acts more forcefully. Critics say that he is simply afraid of angering Baku.
Vardanyan and seven other prisoners are former leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh who went on trial in January together with eight other Karabakh Armenians. Vardanyan, who served as Karabakh premier from November 2022 to February 2023, staged a three-week hunger strike in February and March to protest against the trials described by him as a “farce.”