Lawfare: The Prosecution of Armenian POWs in Azerbaijan and Its Implications for International Law
In the 20th century, the international community sought to redefine the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs). The rights of POWs were detailed in the 1929 Geneva Convention and later redefined in the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 [1]. The Conventions on POWs serve to protect them from torture, forced labor, and mental or physical punishment [2]. Most importantly, the Conventions framed the capture of POWs as a means of preventing their further participation in the conflict, rather than punishing them for acts of violence considered lawful under International Humanitarian Law [3].
From the 2020 and 2023 wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan, there are around 20 POWs remaining in Azerbaijani prisons, 16 of whom are former officials of the de facto Artsakh Republic [4]. These 16 were detained after the 10 month blockade of the Armenian and Nagorno-Karabakh border, and Azerbaijan’s 2023 military offensive to seize the 30-year-old de facto state, which more than 100,000 Armenians called home.
Of the 16 POWs mentioned, 15 are being tried together in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku for alleged war crimes committed within Azerbaijan’s internationally-recognized territory in the name of Artsakh’s statehood. One POW, Ruben Vardanyan, the former State Minister of the Artsakh Republic, is being prosecuted separately in a war tribunal for charges that include acts of terrorism, financing terrorism, war crimes, and crimes against peace and humanity, among others [5]. Vardanyan — a world-renowned philanthropist, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and humanitarian — has a team of international lawyers, and his trial has thus received the most publicity. According to international reports and personal statements, Vardanyan and the others have faced violations of their rights as POWs, including inadequate time with their defense teams, not being informed of charges against them in a language of their understanding, and physical violence against the prisoners in Baku [6].
While the Third Geneva Convention allows states to prosecute POWs for potential war crimes, the right to fair trial must be ensured. Azerbaijan’s prosecution of Armenian POWs without ensuring their right to fair trial represents a deliberate violation of international humanitarian law (IHR), constituting a form of judicial warfare, where the law is manipulated to conduct show trials. These legal processes serve to criminalize lawful combatants and legitimize post-war political narratives.
International institutions and legal frameworks
The rights of POWs are protected by numerous international organizations and legal frameworks, such as the aforementioned Third Geneva Convention, which ensure the safe transfer of detained persons back to their countries of origin. The general rights ensured by this Convention are the humane treatment of prisoners of war; adequate maintenance of the prisoners, which requires providing of food, clothing, and medical care; and equality of treatment [7]. Azerbaijani authorities have shown complete disregard for these rights. Ruben Vardanyan issued a statement from a Baku prison cell on January 16, 2025, informing the international public that he was kept in an Azerbaijani prison for more than 470 days, including 340 days in solitary confinement and 23 days in a punishment cell [8]. The statement was released on the eve of his show trial and revealed grave violations of nearly every article of the Third Geneva Convention [9].
According to Vardanyan, he received a list of 42 charges, some of which threaten life imprisonment [10]. Vardanyan and his lawyer were presented 422 volumes of the case files written solely in the Azerbaijani language, which neither of them understood. The list of charges in Russian were presented to him only on January 8, 2025 — nine days before the trial. After mentioning the violations of court protocols, which included falsified records of interrogation “that never took place,” Vardanyan declared his innocence on all charges presented [11]. Vardanyan’s case is emblematic of how values of justice and legality have not been respected towards Armenian prisoners held in Azerbaijan more broadly.
Azerbaijan’s record of violations against its own and international law has been well documented by international organizations. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) report has reasoned that the continued ill-treatment of detainees “is strongly suggestive of the lack of genuine political will within the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Police leadership to protect detainees” [12]. Moreover, the CPT was alarmed by widespread reports from international organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, that reveal the extreme regularity of electric shocks, beating, sexual violence, simulated suffocation, and the extraction of fingernails as means of forcing confessions from prisoners [13]. On February 19, 2025, Vardanyan announced a hunger strike against the “judicial farce” carried out against him as a “response to the blatant violations of Azerbaijani procedural law and international law.” The Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, has claimed that Azerbaijani authorities have used prohibited psychoactive substances “in order to extort narratives and testimonies aimed at inciting regional escalation” [14]. Lastly, the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Mario Ocampo, has stated that the lack of judicial independence in Azerbaijan is also well-documented by “the European Court of Human Rights, the US State Department, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House” [15]. In his statement, Ocampo compared Azerbaijan’s prosecution of Armenian POWs to “Joseph Stalin’s most sinister tool: the show trial” [16]. With these observations and reports in mind, Vardanyan’s statements regarding the “psychological pressure” exerted on his lawyers and himself must be taken as highly probable.
As the trials continue and the health of the Armenian POWs visibly deteriorates, international law and international institutions, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Court of Justice, and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), remain concerningly incapable of holding Azerbaijani authorities accountable for their war crimes [17]. As a signatory state of the Third Geneva Convention, Azerbaijan has accepted the mandate of the ICRC to investigate and protect POWs. While reports by human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, showcase the clear violation of the right to a fair trial, neither the ICRC nor the United Nations (UN) can effectively pressure Azerbaijan to ensure this essential right in accordance with Azerbaijani procedural and international law. Azerbaijan openly violating international humanitarian law without consequences demonstrates the arbitrary and unenforceable nature of international agreements, such as the Geneva Convention.
What is most pressing is the demonstrated inefficacy of international law. By exploiting a jurisdictional loophole, Azerbaijan is testing the limits of international law enforcement. This loophole takes the form of Azerbaijan’s non-signatory status of the Rome Statute, which founded the ICC, which creates difficulties for the enforcement of international law. Article 8(2)(a)(vi) of the Rome Statute states that unfair trials of POWs are considered war crimes, while Article 8(2)(c)(iv) explains that sentencing POWs without a fair and impartial trial is a violation of the Statute [18]. However, Armenia is the only party in the conflict that has signed the treaty. Since the alleged war crimes occurred on Azerbaijan’s internationally-recognized territory and the Azerbaijani court does not fall under ICC jurisdiction, the ICC cannot hold Azerbaijan accountable. Thus, Azerbaijan can freely disregard international humanitarian law by punishing Armenian lawful combatants both mentally and physically, for which it has both an internationally recognized history and an ardent willingness to do so in the future. On March 3, 2025, the UN Development Programme, the UN Refugee Agency, and — most alarmingly — the ICRC were banned from Azerbaijan [19]. As the health of Armenian prisoners worsens, Azerbaijan is actively trying to prevent the international community from documenting these grave human rights violations by banning them from visiting Armenian prisoners, which is allowed under international law.
Broader implications for international law and future conflicts
If Azerbaijan sets a precedent for prosecuting POWs as criminals, other states may follow. This could set back much-needed progress on POW protections to the early 20th century. As Luis Mario Ocampo has aptly noted, the politically motivated show trials in Azerbaijan — the realization of long-wanted revenge on the Armenian leadership of Artsakh — constitute a textbook form of judicial warfare from the Stalinist-era Soviet Union [20]. If Azerbaijan is the modern realization of the Stalinist regime, then its courtrooms are merely theaters of repression, where verdicts are scripted long before trials begin, and justice is a casualty of political vengeance. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth year, international laws’ demonstrated inefficacy in Azerbaijan could potentially fuel Russian political prosecution of Ukrainian POWs on terrorism and war crime charges.
The international community must act. Show trials to which only Azerbaijani media has access to are setting a dangerous precedent for public humiliation of lawful combatants as a way to achieve revenge on Armenian leaders [21]. When Azerbaijani authorities exhaust their thirst for publicly-displayed revenge, they will imprison the Artsakh leadership in deplorable conditions that should be unseen in any 21st century legal system. This could destabilize the entire system of POW protections, leading to arbitrary detentions and trials in future conflicts.
While certain actors in foreign governments have taken these issues very seriously, given how evident and alarming the possible consequences of staged show trials in the 21st century are, the political leadership of the United States and Europe must act. In a letter urging the United States State Department to pressure Azerbaijan's political leadership to release Armenian POWs, over 60 United States Congress members recalled that the organization “Freedom House ranks Azerbaijan with a ‘democracy percentage’ of 1% and a ‘global freedom score’ of 7 out of 100” [22]. With those statistics in mind, this article calls for action from humanitarian organizations, philanthropists, and media outlets to put attention on the Armenian POWs held in Azerbaijan.
Bibliography
[1] International Committee of the Red Cross, "Protected persons: Prisoners of war and detainees," ICRC, accessed March 3, 2025, https://www.icrc.org/en/law-and-policy/protected-persons-prisoners-war-and-detainees.
[2] “Protected persons: Prisoners of war and detainees," ICRC
[3] Ibid.
[4] Hranoush Dermoyan, "Fate of Armenian POWs and Detainees in Azerbaijan," EVN Report, August 23, 2024, https://evnreport.com/new-updates/fate-of-armenian-pows-and-detainees-in-azerbaijan; the Artsakh Republic was a self-declared Armenian-backed, democratic state in Nagorno-Karabakh. It fell in 2023 after Azerbaijan’s military recaptured the region, leading to its dissolution and mass Armenian exodus.
[5] Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic of Azerbaijan, "Criminal Case on Unlawful Acts Against Azerbaijan Submitted to Court," December 17, 2024, https://genprosecutor.gov.az/en/post/8284.
[6] Human Rights Watch, "Azerbaijan: Armenian POWs Abused in Custody," Human Rights Watch, March 19, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/03/19/azerbaijan-armenian-pows-abused-custody
[7] Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (Third Geneva Convention), August 12, 1949, https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.32_GC-III-EN.pdf.
[8] Armenpress, "I have not given any testimony – message from Ruben Vardanyan, illegally incarcerated in Baku prison, ahead of his trial," Armenpress, January 16, 2025, https://armenpress.am/en/article/1209694.
[9] A show trial is a judicial proceeding where the outcome is predetermined, often serving as political propaganda rather than a fair trial. These trials are typically staged to punish or discredit opponents, create fear, or legitimize government actions, often lacking due process and relying on coerced confessions or fabricated evidence.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, "Report to the Azerbaijani Government on the visit to Azerbaijan carried out by the CPT from 12 to 19 December 2022," Council of Europe, July 3, 2024, https://rm.coe.int/1680b08fa3.
[13] Ibid, 17.
[14] Alexander Pracht, "ICRC visits Armenian prisoners in Baku," CivilNet, February 26, 2025, https://www.civilnet.am/en/news/819598/icrc-visits-armenian-prisoners-in-baku/.
[15] Luis Moreno Ocampo, "Show Trials in Azerbaijan," Luis Moreno Ocampo, January 2025, https://luismorenoocampo.com/lmo_en/show-trials-az/.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Alexander Pracht, "Ruben Vardanyan faces urgent health threats in Azerbaijan, says his lawyer," CivilNet, February 26, 2025, https://www.civilnet.am/en/news/819689/ruben-vardanyan-faces-urgent-health-threats-in-azerbaijan-says-his-lawyer/.
[18] International Criminal Court, Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, July 17, 1998, https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/Rome-Statute-eng.pdf; See pages five and eight for the mentioned articles.
[19] Kuenning, Xandie, and Aytan Farhadova. “UNDP, UNHCR, and ICRC ‘Told to Leave’ Azerbaijan.” OC Media, March 3, 2025. https://oc-media.org/undp-unhcr-and-icrc-told-to-leave-azerbaijan/.
[20] Armenian combatants have officially occupied internationally recognized Azerbaijani territory since 1991 on which the predominantly Armenian population have lived for centuries.
[21] Nailia Bagirova and Lucy Papachristou, "Azerbaijan begins trials of Karabakh ex-separatists including billionaire," Reuters, January 17, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/azerbaijan-begins-trials-karabakh-ex-separatists-including-billionaire-2025-01-17/.
[22] Frank Pallone Jr. and Edward J. Markey, "Letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken Regarding COP29 and Human Rights Concerns in Azerbaijan," October 3, 2024, https://pallone.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/pallone.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Pallone%20-%20Markey %20COP29%20Letter%20-%20FINAL.pdf
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