Vardanyan listed those violations in an audio appeal to Sabina Aliyeva communicated to his family in Armenia by phone and publicized by it on Friday. He said, in particular, that the Armenian prisoners are denied adequate medical care and unable to make weekly phone calls to their families or receive any parcels and letters from them. He also accused Azerbaijani prison authorities of restricting their physical activity to 20-40 minutes a week.
“I cannot have medical tests and obtain their results, even at my own expense, despite all my illnesses and appeals from my lawyers,” said Vardanyan, who briefly served as Karabakh premier in late 2022 and early 2023.
He and seven other former Karabakh Armenian leaders were captured right after the September 2023 Azerbaijani offensive that restored Baku’s full control over Karabakh and forced the region’s Armenian population to flee to Armenia. Five of them were sentenced to life imprisonment and the three others, including Vardanyan, received 20-year jail terms in February at the end of what Armenian lawyers and human rights activists see as sham trials. They all deny a long list of war crimes charges levelled against them.
In his appeal, Vardanyan reaffirmed his wife Veronika Zonabend’s readiness to visit him and the other prisoners held at the Umbaki prison and pass letters, parcels and other essential items on to them. He complained that Aliyeva has ignored Zonabend’s repeated statements to that effect.
“It doesn’t matter how long we will stay at Umbaki. But please, respect your own laws,” added the prominent investment banker and philanthropist who had made his fortune in Russia.
Last year, the Azerbaijani authorities banned representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from periodically visiting the prisoners to inspect their detention conditions and inquire about their health. The European Court of Human Rights afterwards ordered Azerbaijan to submit such information to the Strasbourg court.
Prospects for the prisoners’ release have remained uncertain even after the initialing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty in Washington in August 2025. Neither the treaty nor a separate declaration signed by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian at the White House commits Baku to freeing them.
Pashinian’s government is regularly accused by its domestic critics of doing little to secure the prisoners’ release. Pashinian and other Armenian officials deny the accusations.