In a weekend interview with the France 24 TV channel, Aliyev compared them to the leaders of Nazi Germany.
“These people committed serious crimes against humanity,” he said. “Imagine if at the end of World War II, two months after the Nuremberg trials, someone came and said, ‘Please release the Nazi leaders who were sentenced to death.’ [Calling for the release of the former Karabakh leaders] is the same thing, even worse. Their crimes are worse than what the Nazis did during World War II.”
Five of them were sentenced to life imprisonment and the two others received 20-year jail terms on February 5 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.
Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian-born billionaire and philanthropist who briefly served as Karabakh premier in 2022-2023, has stood a separate trial on similar war crimes charges strongly denied by them. He is expected to be sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday.
The Azerbaijani authorities have not allowed independent media or observers to cover the trials. Nevertheless, Aliyev claimed that they were “absolutely transparent.”
UAE - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev receive a Zayed Award for Human Fraternity, Abu Dhabi, February 4, 2025.
The February 5 verdict prompted strong condemnation from Armenian opposition leaders and civil society figures. By contrast, the Armenian government has still not officially commented on it, stoking opposition allegations about its complicity in the continuing captivity of the former Karabakh leaders and 11 other Armenians held in Azerbaijan.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian is regularly accused by his political opponents of doing nothing to try to secure their release. One of his top political allies, parliament speaker Alen Simonian, again claimed the opposite on Saturday hours after the French broadcaster aired the interview with Aliyev. Still, Simonian declined to comment on Aliyev’s statement.
Aliyev confirmed that U.S. Vice President JD Vance raised with him the issue of the Armenian prisoners during their February 10 meeting in Baku.
“And I presented Azerbaijan's position,” he said. “That was the conversation.”
Meeting with Pashinian at the White House on August 8, U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to ask Aliyev to free the “Christians” remaining in Azerbaijani captivity. Trump said he is confident that the Azerbaijani leader will agree to do that.