When it comes to the status of prisoners being held inside Azerbaijan—and without speaking to any one particular case—you have seen us consistently call for Azerbaijan to respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all persons inside its country, including prisoners. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller stated this, answering a question from Armenian journalist Haykaram Nahapetyan about the fate of Ruben Vardanyan and the other Armenian prisoners in Azerbaijan.

“When it comes to the status of prisoners being held inside Azerbaijan—and without speaking to any one particular case—you have seen us consistently call for Azerbaijan to respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all persons inside its country, including prisoners.  You have seen us take actions when we have not seen Azerbaijan respecting the fundamental human rights of all persons inside Azerbaijan, and we’ll continue to pursue that policy,” Miller said.

Also, he answered the question of whether the US Secretary of State discussed the relations between Armenia and Turkey during his visit to Turkey.

“So I’m not going to talk about the private diplomatic conversations that we had when the Secretary was in the region last week.  But I can you that, of course, relation—the relationship between Türkiye between Armenia is something that we regularly engage with officials from both countries on, and I think best to leave it at that,” Miller added.