Today it is being said that there are 23 Armenian prisoners in Baku; this is due to the fact that the Azerbaijani side confirms the fact that 23 Armenians are in prison in Azerbaijan, and there is verifiable information about their being. Human rights activist and attorney Siranush Sahakyan, who is the President of the International Comparative Law Center and the Armenian POWs’ legal representative at the European Court of Human Rights, stated this during a discussion Wednesday on the rights of Armenian prisoners and hostages being held in Azerbaijani capital Baku.

“This does not mean at all that only 23 Armenians were initially captured and are still being held in Azerbaijan. There have been such developments that reveal war crimes; in particular, the killing of [Armenian] prisoners. Moreover, in such episodes when the body of the already shot prisoner was handed over to the Armenian side. And here there is combined evidence on the one hand, he was captured in Azerbaijan, on the other hand, the body is under the control of the Armenian side.

Secondly, the [Armenian] prisoners were forcibly disappeared. In the period following the capture, certain developments took place, due to which we lost information about these people. The Azerbaijani side has a denialist approach, denies its connection with the forcibly disappeared prisoners, refuses to provide information.

In such uncertain conditions, there is no independent international organization that, as a result of search operations, can to find the missing prisoners being sought, check if they are alive, and give us information about whether they are alive," added Sahakyan.

She noted that although it is announced that Armenia has 23 prisoners in Azerbaijan, there are dozens of forcibly disappeared prisoners.

"There is often talk of 80 [such] people. These are, in fact, the cases confirmed during the fact-finding activities of human rights activists. This can never be qualified as a thorough number. Human rights activists present facts about at least 80 cases. But these numbers could be much higher,” Sahakyan said.

According to her, of the 23 Armenian prisoners held in Azerbaijan, 8 are from the military and political leadership of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), and 5 people were captured during the 2020 war.

“Azerbaijan is currently illegally detaining both those captured during the 44-day war of 2020, as well as those captured, detained in 2023,” the human rights activist emphasized.

She informed that at the moment they have information that the members of the Council of Europe’s European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment has visited Azerbaijan.

“We do not rule out that they had a one-time meeting with some Armenians within the framework of the visits. I will refrain from providing details. We will make a statement in the future," Siranush Sahakyan concluded.