Aliyev tries to falsely claim this as a criminal matter, declaring that committing ethnic cleansing is normal and resisting it is a crime. But let's be clear: these people are guilty only of trying to believe that the indigenous people of Artsakh have a right to dignity, autonomy, and self-determination. U.S. Congressman and Co-Chair of the Armenian Caucus Brad Sherman made this statement at a press conference on Capitol Hill, marking the 1,000th day of Azerbaijan's unlawful detention of Armenian prisoners of war.

The lawmaker recalled that Baku's military aggression in 2023, which culminated a brutal nine-month blockade, led to total ethnic cleansing—the forced exodus of over 100,000 indigenous Armenians from lands where their ancestors had lived for thousands of years. During this, Azerbaijani forces unlawfully captured dozens of individuals, including the democratically elected leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Congressman emphasized that the prisoners are subjected to regular beatings and torture, as documented by international human rights organizations, while their trials have been turned into closed sham proceedings resulting in extended prison sentences ranging from 15 years to life.

"Just this February, a so-called military court sentenced former Artsakh leaders, including former president Arayik Harutyunyan and former foreign minister David Babayan—who met with me in my office just a few months before his abduction—to life in prison. Shortly after, former state minister Ruben Vardanyan was sentenced to 20 years after spending more than a year in solitary confinement. Amnesty International rightly called this trial nothing short of a travesty of justice," noted Brad Sherman.

The politician pointed out that in Azerbaijan, which is ranked by human rights advocates as having a freedom score of just 6 out of 100, even its own citizens cannot count on a fair trial, let alone Armenians, against whom a state policy of xenophobia has been waged for decades. Sherman stressed that the practice of holding hostages was used by Baku after the 2020 war as well to terrorize Armenian society, and horrifying footage of extrajudicial executions of Armenian servicemen, distributed by the perpetrators themselves, has surfaced on social media multiple times.

According to the Congressman, the U.S. administration must deploy all available tools to exert pressure on Baku. He announced that he has prepared and negotiated a special amendment with the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, requiring decisive action from Washington to achieve the release of the detainees.

"The current U.S. administration seeks to achieve peace in the region. But there will be no genuine and lasting peace until every Armenian prisoner and political prisoner is free from Azerbaijani prisons and free to return home to their families," concluded Brad Sherman.