Comment by Siranush Sahakyan on the Statement by Sabina Aliyeva, Commissioner for Human Rights of Azerbaijan
On 19 September 2026, the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights of Azerbaijan dismissed as “groundless” the concerns raised by Ruben Vardanyan about himself and the other Armenian prisoners held at Umbaki. The response is notable less for what it answers than for what it avoids.
1. Several complaints simply disappear from the response altogether: the absence of video calls; access to education; regular ICRC access; family visits; letters and parcels; diplomatic or consular access; and Veronika Zonabend’s proposed humanitarian visit.
The silence on family visits and on the proposed humanitarian visit is telling. The Office asserts that family contact is ensured. Not a single family visit has taken place since the prisoners were detained. The only contact that exists is by telephone, and not for every prisoner.
Requests for assistance with Veronika Zonabend’s visit were submitted to the Commissioner’s Office in June and July. They remain unanswered. Meanwhile, Azerbaijani media have openly suggested that she could be arrested if she comes to Baku. That is what “family contact is ensured” means in practice.
2. On other issues, the response answers a question that nobody asked. A notarial service provided to Arayik Harutyunyan does not answer why Ruben Vardanyan has been unable to execute his own powers of attorney. Books do not answer a complaint about newspaper subscriptions. A medical check does not establish that the specific diagnostic examinations requested by Vardanyan were performed or that the results were provided to him.
3. Where the Commissioner’s version conflicts with the facts reported by Vardanyan, documentation is conspicuously absent. The Office states that every call to the 916 hotline received a timely response. Vardanyan was permitted one such call, on 19 June. No record of any response has been produced. Nor has the Office produced substantive replies to the written submissions made on his behalf.
If weekly calls are genuinely available to every prisoner, why does Lyudvig Mkrtchyan wait one and a half to more than two months between calls? The telephone logs can answer that question immediately.
Vardanyan has repeatedly sought notarial access to execute powers of attorney, or access to the forms so that he could sign them himself. Neither has been provided. A claim was therefore filed before the Baku Administrative Court on 20 August and was only recently registered.
Between June and August, at least six written submissions were sent to the Commissioner’s Office concerning medical examinations, video calls, the 916 hotline, a meeting with the Commissioner, and family visits. Not one received a reply.
The same pattern applies to access to counsel. Vardanyan’s local lawyer has repeatedly been denied access to him. On 16 September, access was refused because the head of the facility was absent. On 19 September, the Commissioner announced that prisoners’ rights were being ensured. On 22 September, counsel was denied access again on the same ground.
The matter has therefore had to go to court: a claim has been filed against the prison administration over the denial of access.
The Commissioner also relies heavily on visits carried out by her Office. Yet the uncomfortable irony is that the very institution invoking those visits as proof of effective oversight has already been criticised by the UN Committee against Torture for having “not effectively carried out its functions” in responding to credible allegations of serious violations – a failure the Committee said “reflects a lack of independence.”
If Ruben Vardanyan’s allegations are truly “groundless,” the answer is straightforward: produce the records for every Armenian prisoner held at Umbaki – records of family visits, records of consular access, telephone logs, written replies to their submissions, notarial records, and records of access to independent counsel. A categorical denial, however emphatic, is not evidence of fact.
P.S. The prisoners’ request, conveyed by Ruben Vardanyan, for a meeting with the Commissioner remains outstanding. So, inconveniently, do the questions her statement did not answer.
Siranush Sahakyan
Representative of Armenian Prisoners of War before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)
