The Armenians being held captive held in Baku constantly were and are under real threats to their lives. We have several dozen recorded cases when people were killed during captivity. Siranush Sahakyan, the lawyer representing the interests of the Armenian captives in Azerbaijan at the European Court of Human Rights, said this during a panel discussion Thursday on Armenian prisoners of war being held in the prisons of Azerbaijani capital.

"The issue of captives is essentially linked to the issue of enforced disappearance, when although we have no evidence about the killing of captives, we have cases when dozens of Armenians—about 80 Armenians—were subjected to enforced disappearances.

The positive [thing] about the captives is that at the moment we have about 210 Armenians who have been repatriated. Moreover, the Armenians who ended up under the Azerbaijani authorities as a result of border incidents before the 44-day war of 2020 have become part of the repatriation.

About 23 Armenians are continuously being held in Baku. As is known, 5 out of 23 were captured during 2020, and the remaining incidents were recorded in 2023. Seven out of the 23 were part of completed trials, there are guilty verdicts against them, and according to Azerbaijan, they are Armenians serving sentences who have committed serious crimes. False accusations such as genocide, or committing war crimes during the first [Nagorno-Karabakh] war [in the early 1990s] were put as the basis for these convictions," Sahakyan said.