Citizens gathered outside the UN office in Armenia to demand the release of businessman and philanthropist Ruben Vardanyan and other Armenians held in Azerbaijani prisons.
Aram Sargsyan, a member of the coordinating council of the Together alternative socio-political movement, claimed the UN effectively justified the actions of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s regime by ruling on February 17 that the detention of former Artsakh State Minister Ruben Vardanyan and other Armenian prisoners was legal. According to Sputnik Armenia, it has since emerged that Hanna Yudkivska, chair of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD), has close ties to Azerbaijani state oil company SOCAR.
Sargsyan said the group gathered to deliver a petition to UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
“The UN Working Group’s Opinion No. 46/2024 concluded that Vardanyan’s detention was not arbitrary. That means the UN, in effect, legitimized Aliyev’s regime and deemed the detention lawful,” he stated.
Sargsyan further claimed that Yudkivska’s husband has Azerbaijani roots and is engaged in civic activism in Ukraine.
“This shows Aliyev has managed to purchase what contradicts the UN’s own rules. In our letter, we call on Guterres to remain true to the UN charter, dismiss the group’s chair, appoint a new head, create a new commission, and reopen the investigation. We are here to say: you are enabling injustice and must abide by your own statutes,” he emphasized.
Sargsyan said the Armenian government’s silence on the issue made it pointless for the Together movement to appeal to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan or the Foreign Ministry. Instead, the group chose to send the letter to them as well as to Armenia’s Ministry of Justice.
In September 2022, Ruben Vardanyan relocated to Artsakh and was appointed State Minister on November 4. He was dismissed on February 23, 2023, but remained in Artsakh until Azerbaijan’s military offensive in September 2023.
On September 27, he was unlawfully detained and remains imprisoned in Baku alongside other political and military leaders from Artsakh. Azerbaijani authorities have charged him with financing terrorism, forming armed groups, and illegal border crossing. Though he requested to consolidate his case with those of other detainees, the court ruled that 400 of the 422 case volumes would be examined separately.
