Five of them were sentenced to life imprisonment and the two others received 20-year jail terms on Thursday at the end of what Armenian lawyers and human rights activists see as a sham trial. A military court in Baku handed slightly shorter prison sentences to eight other Karabakh Armenians tried together with them.
The verdicts prompted strong condemnation from Armenian opposition leaders and civil society figures. By contrast, the Armenian government remained silent as of Friday evening, stoking opposition allegations about its complicity in the continuing captivity of the former Karabakh leaders and twelve other Armenians held in Azerbaijan. Neither Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s office nor the Armenian Foreign Ministry would say whether Yerevan will make an official statement on the development.
Only one of more than a dozen parliament deputies from Pashinian’s Civil Contract party contacted by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service commented on it. The lawmaker, Vahagn Aleksanian, said only that Pashinian’s government will continue to seek the release of all Armenian prisoners “without additional noise and publicity.”
Azerbaijan - Former leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh stand trial in Baku, November 3, 2025.
The jail sentences were announced the day after Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev received a United Arab Emirates peace prize following fresh talks held in Abu Dhabi. They again claimed to have established peace between their nations.
Yerevan waited for weeks before criticizing the start of the “mock trials” of the Karabakh Armenians a year ago. Pashinian claimed in January 2025 that explicit condemnation would only harm the defendants. His critics insisted that he is simply afraid of angering Baku. They offered the same explanation for his latest silence.
“We have Nikol Pashinian, who went [to the UAE] and became brothers with Aliyev the day before,” said Artur Khachatrian, a lawmaker representing the opposition Hayastan alliance. “They went on stage with their families, and 24 hours later Aliyev sentenced those people to life imprisonment.”
Khachatrian claimed that the Armenian premier has no desire to push for the release of the prisoners. Edmon Marukian, the leader of the opposition Bright Armenia party formerly allied to Pashinian, likewise blamed him for their captivity.
“It’s the last 35 years of Armenia's life that have been sentenced to life in prison in Azerbaijan,” said Marukian. “This is all you need to know about the so-called ‘peace process.’”