Azerbaijani authorities announced arrest warrants for both men on Monday, saying that they have been indicted for helping to launch in 1988 demonstrations for Nagorno-Karabakh’s unification with Armenia. They said Sarkisian and Kocharian are also wanted for their role in the 1991 creation of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.
The ex-presidents, who were born in Karabakh and led the territory during its 1991-1994 war of secession with Azerbaijan, shrugged off the accusations. They also linked the Azerbaijani arrest warrants with what they see as politically motivated charges leveled against them by Armenian law-enforcement authorities.
Gor Abrahamian, a spokesman for Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General, dismissed the arrest warrants as baseless and illegal. He said the law-enforcement agency will press Interpol and other international bodies to deny Azerbaijan any help in detaining Kocharian and Sarkisian.
Baku already issued international arrest warrants for Karabakh’s current leaders shortly after the 2020 war with Armenia. Yerevan condemned the move at the time, saying that it has “taken measures” to prevent them from being placed on Interpol’s most wanted list.
“These are effective measures that produce results,” Abrahamian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “As far as international manhunts are concerned, our efforts to block those proceedings have been a success.”
In the wake of the 2020 war, Armenian law-enforcement authorities likewise opened several criminal cases against Azerbaijani government and military officials accused by them of committing war crimes. But they have still not named any of those officials.