Armenian prisoners held in Baku are unable to send or receive letters. Siranush Sahakyan, who represents Armenian prisoners before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), made this statement on October 16 at the international conference Freedom, Justice and Reconciliation.
Sahakyan recalled that Ms. Veronika Zonabend (co-founder and Chair Emerita of UWC Dilijan College in Armenia, the first United World College in the region; she is married to Armenian philanthropist and former Artsakh State Minister Ruben Vardanyan, and has been actively advocating for the release of Armenian detainees held in Baku, Azerbaijan) had launched an initiative allowing people wishing to write to the prisoners to send letters to designated addresses. The letters were collected and forwarded to the Armenian government for delivery to the Armenians held in Azerbaijan through government channels, as their families, relatives and friends were unable to send letters directly to the penitentiary institution or through the ombudsperson.
Sahakyan said that contradictory information had once again emerged on the matter. The government had indicated that letters could be sent directly to Azerbaijan through Haypost, Armenia’s national postal operator. However, Sahakyan noted that similar attempts had been made over many years and were continuing, and that there was evidence that Haypost refused to send any letters involving communication from Armenia to Azerbaijan. Haypost had also issued an official clarification.
According to Sahakyan, this demonstrated that the prisoners’ freedom of correspondence was also restricted and that they were being kept in complete isolation.
Addressing the legal representation of Armenian prisoners, she noted that their lawyers were exclusively Azerbaijani nationals. She pointed to what she described as novel approaches, citing several recent instances in which Ruben Vardanyan’s court-appointed public defender had been denied access to the penitentiary institution. In effect, even lawyers appointed and funded by the Azerbaijani state were unable to gain access and provide a degree of legal assistance within the framework of domestic proceedings, Sahakyan said.
She also reported that Ruben Vardanyan had not appealed the court ruling, which, under Azerbaijani law, was final and had entered into force.
An appeal concerning the case of the 15 prisoners had been filed with Azerbaijan’s Supreme Court. Sahakyan explained that, when the appeal was submitted, the court-appointed public defenders had once again not received the ruling of the appellate court. She said her team had maintained communication with the public defenders and had written confirmation that the appeals were filed in general terms, based on excerpts from the ruling, because the Azerbaijani authorities had provided neither the court decisions themselves nor copies to the appointed public defenders.
Without access to the judgment, an effective appeal was impossible. Since the defenders had been denied the opportunity to obtain it, they had resorted to filing formal appeals, Sahakyan said, concluding that they had no expectations regarding the outcome.