Azerbaijan kidnaps Nagorno-Karabakh civilian being evacuated by Red Cross

By Mane Berikyan

Azerbaijan on Saturday kidnapped Vagif Khachatryan, a 68-year-old Nagorno-Karabakh resident being evacuated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for urgent medical treatment, on the Lachin corridor.

Azerbaijan now holds Khachatryan in captivity and is threatening to charge him with alleged crimes committed during the Nagorno-Karabakh war in the 1990s. His whereabouts are currently unknown.

Hundreds of people, including Khachatryan’s relatives and Nagorno-Karabakh officials, gathered in front of the Stepanakert office of the ICRC to demand Khachatryan’s release.

Khachatryan was detained by Azerbaijani border guards on the Lachin corridor while having his passport processed to be medically evacuated by the Red Cross. Since April, Azerbaijan has set up and operated an illegal checkpoint on the Lachin corridor, which is the only overland route connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia.

His daughter, Tsovinar Khachatryan, was with him when he was taken away. She told Radio Azatutyun her father is in need of emergency surgery and was already unable to stand on his own by the time they reached the checkpoint. 

Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General confirmed that Khachatryan is in their custody, and said he will be charged with “genocide” for alleged crimes committed during the first Nagorno-Karabakh war. Khachatryan’s daughter has denied the charges, saying that her father worked as a driver during those years of the Soviet Union.

In response, Armenia’s Foreign Ministry published a statement saying “this operation was thoroughly planned in advance” and emphasizing that the Red Cross provides a list of patients who will be transported through the Lachin corridor to both Armenia and Azerbaijan in advance. 

The Red Cross reiterated Armenia’s position, saying, “We work in transparency, coordinate with the sides [and] only operate with their agreement. This was the case today.”

The Foreign Ministry’s statement also warned that Azerbaijan makes “an open threat to apply the same approach to other residents of Nagorno-Karabakh as well.” 

Political analyst Tigran Grigoryan told CivilNet that Azerbaijan’s move “means that now the entire male population of Nagorno-Karabakh is imprisoned there.” 

The majority of Nagorno-Karabakh’s male population has at some point served in Nagorno-Karabakh’s Defense Army, which has a mandatory draft in place for all men when they turn 18. Many men in Karabakh have also participated in the first and second Nagorno-Karabakh wars. 

Grigoryan says “all of this can be qualified as some sort of illegal activity by the Azerbaijani authorities” and used to present trumped-up charges against male civilians. This means that male civilians will be unable to leave Nagorno-Karabakh even in case of medical emergency, he added.

Meanwhile, several Azerbaijani officials have been circulating images of a soldier from the first Nagorno-Karabakh war they claim is Khachatryan. In response, Nagorno-Karabakh’s Human Rights Defender Gegham Stepanyan posted a photograph of Khachatryan taken in the 1990s, which shows they cannot be the same person.

As of Saturday, Nagorno-Karabakh officials report that the Red Cross has halted the transfer of critically ill patients from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, despite a total humanitarian blockade of the region by Azerbaijan.