By Shoghik Galstyan | Azatutyun.am
Former Artsakh State Minister Ruben Vardanyan has been transferred from the detention facility of Azerbaijan’s State Security Service to the Umbaki prison complex[1], which operates under the Azerbaijani Ministry of Justice. According to Siranush Sahakyan, the representative of Armenian prisoners before the European Court of Human Rights, the other Armenian prisoners have also been transferred to the same prison.
“According to the information available to me, all 19 Armenians are being held in the Umbaki complex. Armenians had previously been held there as well — three individuals have been kept in this facility since 2023, while 16 others were transferred there in February. These are the Armenians sentenced in February: Ruben Vardanyan in one case, and in another case we have 15 defendants, seven of whom are Artsakh’s military-political leaders, while eight are individuals who participated in Artsakh’s self-defense,” Sahakyan told Azatutyun.
According to Siranush Sahakyan, the transfer is linked to Azerbaijan’s internal procedures. Some of the verdicts issued in February — including the sentence against Ruben Vardanyan — were not appealed due to the absence of fair trial guarantees and are therefore considered to have entered into legal force. Under these circumstances, Sahakyan explained, Azerbaijan’s domestic system separates convicted prisoners from detainees awaiting trial.
“Apparently, all Armenian prisoners are now regarded as individuals serving sentences based on legally effective verdicts. Therefore, they were transferred from the detention facility subordinate to the State Security Service to another institution operating under the Ministry of Justice — namely, the Umbaki prison complex,” she said.
In February, the Baku Military Court sentenced 16 Armenian prisoners, including Artsakh’s military-political leadership, to life imprisonment or lengthy prison terms.
Sahakyan learned of the prisoners’ transfer to Umbaki prison — located roughly 70 kilometers from Baku in an isolated area — from Ruben Vardanyan’s family. She stated that, just as with their trials, there has been no transparency in this process either. Family members received no prior information about the transfer. Even now, it remains unknown under what conditions the prisoners are being held in the prison, which was commissioned in 2023. Azerbaijani authorities claim that Umbaki meets all international standards.
“Physical conditions alone do not mean that international standards are being upheld, because there are also issues related to food, hygiene arrangements, maintaining contact with the outside world, and, importantly, ensuring treatment free from psychological or physical pressure. From this perspective, all international reports clearly document that torture is a widespread practice in Azerbaijani penitentiary institutions, ill-treatment is also systemic, and there are no effective mechanisms to restrain such abuses or punish those responsible,” the human rights advocate noted.
Umbaki prison was also mentioned in a briefing published last week by Amnesty International. Azerbaijani political prisoner Bahruz Samadov is reportedly being held there. According to the respected human rights organization, Samadov is not even allowed to walk in the prison yard and may spend no more than two hours per day on a one-meter-wide balcony.
According to Siranush Sahakyan, after lengthy negotiations, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture conducted a brief visit last year to Azerbaijani prisons, including Umbaki. The report has been completed, but Azerbaijan has refused to consent to its publication.
In the human rights advocate’s opinion, this alone indicates the conditions prevailing in Azerbaijani prisons:
“This leaves us to conclude the extremely serious and alarming issues regarding torture that were raised, to the extent that the state refuses to give consent and refrains from allowing publication of the findings. The list of facilities visited by the experts and committee members included both the detention center where Armenians had previously been held and the new Umbaki complex.”
Since the closure of the International Committee of the Red Cross office in Baku last September, the only means of obtaining information from Armenian prisoners held in Azerbaijan has been through telephone calls. Armenians captured after 2023 had been allowed one phone call per week before the transfer. Sahakyan stated that it will take some time and sufficient information to assess how the change in detention regime may affect this right.
[1] In the village of Umbaki (40 km south of Baku), the new mixed-regime penitentiary complex was opened in late 2023. The total detention limit of the complex is 1,300 people, and 19 cell-type buildings of different modes have been built there