ICRC officials have periodically been allowed to visit the 23 prisoners to inspect their detention conditions, inquire about their health and arrange phone calls between them and their families. They most recently did so in June.
Some relatives of the prisoners said on Wednesday the Geneva-based organization has informed them that Baku has stripped it of that access. They said they are now even more worried about the well-being of their loved ones.
“We, the relatives of all the prisoners, were told that the Red Cross will not visit the prisoners anymore,” one of them told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“The Red Cross was their only channel of communication with their families,” she said. “That warmed their hearts a little. It’s over now.”
The ICRC spokeswoman in Yerevan, Zara Amatuni, did not explicitly confirm or deny the information. But she did announce that the Red Cross “will suspend its activities in Azerbaijan soon.” The Azerbaijani government announced plans to close the ICRC office in Baku early this year.
The prisoners include eight former political and military leaders of Karabakh, who went on trial in January along with eight other Karabakh Armenians also captured during Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military offensive. The Armenian government criticized the “mock trials” in February after weeks of effective silence condemned by its domestic critics.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian claimed that explicit condemnation of the trials would only harm the defendants. Pashinian’s detractors insisted that he is simply afraid of angering Baku. Some of them claim that he does not want the former Karabakh leaders, notably Armenian-born billionaire and philanthropist Ruben Vardanyan, to be freed.
Yerevan does not seem to have pushed for the release of the prisoners in its talks with Baku on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty finalized in March. Pashinian insisted on July 16 that his administration is continuing to “deal with” the issue. The captives’ families are not satisfied with these assurances and are seeking a meeting with Pashinian.
Speaking in June, Vardanyan’s U.S. lawyer, Jared Genser, pointed out that the draft peace treaty reportedly does not address the fate of the prisoners and instead commits the two sides to withdrawing their international lawsuits filed against each other.
“What that means is that if the prisoners are not released by then, simultaneously with the signing of the treaty, [Pashinian] won’t be able to raise the issue of prisoners going forward,” Genser told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “And what that means is that they will be trapped in Azerbaijan, with [Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev being able to do what he wants.”