According to the Armenian Defense Ministry, the soldiers, Harutiun Hovagimian and Karen Ghazarian, were ambushed and “kidnapped” on May 26 after delivering water and food to Armenian army units guarding the border with Azerbaijan. The ministry published photographs of their abandoned military truck found in a wooded area in in Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province.
The Azerbaijani side claimed that Hovagimian and Ghazarian were taken prisoner during a sabotage attack on an Azerbaijani army outpost. It brought a string of criminal charges, including “terrorism,” against them. They were convicted of these charges, strongly denied by Yerevan, at the end of a brief trial that began on Monday.
Artak Zeynalian, a human rights lawyer representing the families of dozens of other Armenian prisoners of war held in Azerbaijan, described the trial as a “farce.” Zeynalian said the Azerbaijani military “kidnapped” Hovagimian and Ghazarian in hopes of swapping them with two Azerbaijani soldiers who were detained in Armenia in April.
Baku has repeatedly demanded the release of the Azerbaijani conscripts, saying that they strayed into Armenian territory from the Nakhichevan exclave due to heavy fog.
One of them, Huseyn Akhundov, was charged with murdering a Syunik resident one day before his detention. An Armenian court sentenced Akhundov to 20 years in prison on June 21.
The other Azerbaijani soldier, Agshin Bebirov, was given a 11.5-year prison sentence in May. Both rulings were condemned by Baku.