The Case of Ruben Vardanyan: The Indictment and the Judgment of the Baku Military Court of Azerbaijan
Published in Full for Independent Examination
Note to Readers
Published below are the indictment against Ruben Vardanyan and the judgment delivered in his criminal case by the Baku Military Court of the Republic of Azerbaijan. They are made available in full to enable independent examination of the proceedings, the evidence relied upon, and the legal reasoning on which the Baku Military Court based his conviction.
The indictment comprises 1,945 pages and the judgment 1,357 pages.
The judgment attributes criminal responsibility to Ruben Vardanyan through what the Azerbaijani authorities characterize as a “criminal organisation.” In substance, this characterization encompasses the governing and institutional structures of the self-proclaimed and internationally unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which existed in Nagorno-Karabakh for more than three decades. The judgment traces the activities attributed to this alleged organisation across thirty-six years, including events dating from 1988–1994, when Vardanyan was approximately twenty years old and a student.
The judgment identifies early December 2020 as the point at which Vardanyan allegedly joined this organisation, although he was then living in Moscow. The conduct relied upon by the Baku Military Court in support of this conclusion includes a humanitarian allocation made by the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative on 9 December 2020 and the subsequent arrival in Stepanakert (referred to as Khankendi in the documents) of a laureate of the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. The judgment further treats funding provided by identified charitable foundations as constituting the financing of terrorism.
Given the nature and gravity of these findings, we invite international legal institutions, scholars of criminal and international law, human rights organisations, trial-monitoring bodies, journalists, and independent researchers to examine the indictment and judgment directly and to form their own conclusions regarding the evidentiary basis of the conviction, the legal reasoning employed by the Baku Military Court, the fairness of the proceedings, and the standards of justice applied.
Note on Translation
The judgment is published in an English translation prepared from the original Azerbaijani text. The indictment is published in an English translation prepared from its Russian-language version.
Indictment
