The ministry revealed the request in comments to the Sputnik news agency. It did not name that “neutral” country or say whether Armenia has also asked Azerbaijan to allow such visits. It said only that Baku’s permission is necessary.
“It’s not clear whether the third country has given its consent and whether an official application regarding the candidacy of that third country has been submitted to the Azerbaijani authorities,” said Siranush Sahakian, a Yerevan-based lawyer representing the prisoners in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR),
Sahakian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the Armenian government should answer these questions. She said that organizing third-party visits is “extremely important” now because the 19 captives, among them eight former leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh, have been essentially held incommunicado for more than a year.
Up until last year, the Azerbaijani authorities allowed representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to periodically visit them 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 in September 2025. The ECHR afterwards ordered Baku to submit such information to the Strasbourg court.
In an audio statement communicated to his family by phone and publicized on Wednesday, one of the former Karabakh leaders, Davit Babayan, said he and some of the other prisoners are suffering from “serious health problems.” He did not elaborate.
Last month, the wife of Lyudvig Mkrtchian, who was taken prisoner by Azerbaijani during the 2020 war in Karabakh, expressed serious concern about what she described as a sharp deterioration of his health. She is able to periodically talk to him by phone.
Prospects for the prisoners’ release remain uncertain one year after the initialing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty in Washington. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian officials insist that Yerevan has been doing its best to try to repatriate them. Their critics dismiss these assurances.