The 70-year-old Vagif Khachatrian is a former resident of Nagorno-Karabakh who was arrested by Azerbaijani security services in July 2023 as he was escorted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to Armenian hospitals for urgent treatment.
He was subsequently tried and sentenced by an Azerbaijani military court to 15 years in prison for allegedly killing and deporting Karabakh’s ethnic Azerbaijani residents during the 1991-1994 Armenian-Azerbaijani war. Khachatrian, who refused to be represented by an Azerbaijani government-appointed lawyer during the trial, denied the accusations.
Azerbaijan’s Justice Ministry said that Khachatrian was taken to hospital on Monday after complaining of pain in the heart and undergoing “intensive resuscitation” therapy in an Azerbaijani prison. He remains in intensive care there, the ministry said in a statement cited by Azerbaijani state media. It described his condition as “serious.”
“At the moment, the patient has been released from a life-threatening critical condition but his condition is still assessed as serious,” a senior medic at Baku’s Yeni Klinika hospital treating Khachatrian was reported to say later in the day.
The Karabakh Armenian man already suffered from heart trouble when doctors in Stepanakert decided in 2023 to send him to a hospital in Yerevan. His reported hospitalization in Baku came three days after he was again allowed to talk to members of his family in Armenia by phone. The Armenian news website 168.am reported the phone call earlier on Tuesday.
“My father called us on December 19,” it quoted Khachatrian’s daughter Vera as saying. “He said he is fine.”
Khachatrian is one of at least 23 Armenian prisoners still held in Azerbaijan. They include eight former leaders of Karabakh who are standing trial on grave charges denied by them.
The Azerbaijani authorities until recently allowed representatives of the ICRC to periodically visit the prisoners to inspect their detention conditions, inquire about their health and arrange phone calls between them and their families. The Red Cross lost that exclusive access after being forced to close its mission in Azerbaijan on September 3. The captives’ families are now even more concerned about their treatment.
Siranush Sahakian, an Armenian lawyer representing them, said later in September that some of the captives claimed to have tried to commit suicide in phone calls with their relatives in Armena. Shortly afterwards, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered Azerbaijan to submit by November 4 fresh information about the detention and health conditions of the captives.
Sahakian said on Tuesday that Baku has failed to comply with the order. “They are deliberately dragging out the provision of information, including information about [the prisoners’] health conditions,” she told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.