The lawyer, Siranush Sahakian, accused Azerbaijani judicial and law-enforcement authorities of violating eight articles of the European Convention on Human Rights signed and ratified by Baku.
“Vardanyan’s individual guilt was not substantiated by facts or evidence in the verdict,” she said in a statement.
Vardanyan, who held the second-highest post in Nagorno-Karabakh’s leadership from November 2022 to February 2023, was arrested at an Azerbaijani checkpoint in the Lachin corridor in September 2023 as he fled the region along with its practically entire ethnic Armenian population. Seven other former Karabakh Armenian leaders were also arrested during the exodus that followed an Azerbaijani military offensive.
Five of them were sentenced to life imprisonment while the two others as well as Vardanyan received 20-year jail sentences in February at the end of yearlong trials denounced by Amnesty International as a “travesty.” They all denied a long list of accusations brought against them.
Unlike them, Vardanyan decided not to appeal against his sentence, saying that he does not want to legitimize the “politically motivated and unlawful” case. Sahakian said he cannot defend his rights “within a system that inherently denies the right to a fair trial.”
The lawyer announced the impending appeal to the Strasbourg court when she spoke to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on July 10. She said Azerbaijani authorities have made it possible by finally providing Vardanyan’s legal team with the full text of the guilty verdict against him. In her words, they remain reluctant to do so with regard to the seven other former Karabakh leaders.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian officials insist that Yerevan has been doing its best to try to secure the release of the Armenian prisoners. Their critics dismiss these assurances.
Vardanyan has likewise repeatedly accused the Armenian government of being indifferent to the prisoners’ fate. He has repeatedly lambasted Pashinian in statements from an Azerbaijani prison released through his family. Davit Ishkhanian, another former Karabakh leader held in Azerbaijan, has gone farther, saying that Pashinian’s administration does not want Baku to free them.