Civilnet
By Alexander Pracht
Former International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo believes there is a conflict of interest that invalidates the recent United Nations decision declaring that the detention of former Nagorno-Karabakh State Minister Ruben Vardanyan in Azerbaijan was not arbitrary, the Free Armenian Hostages initiative said in a press release on Wednesday.
In his expert opinion, Ocampo argued that one of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) members, Ganna Yudkivska, had financial and personal ties to Azerbaijan that should have disqualified her from taking part in the case.
“These are gross contraventions of UN rules,” Ocampo said, according to the report. “Ganna Yudkivska’s professional, financial, and family ties with Azerbaijan have compromised her impartiality. Someone with close ties to the ruling authorities in Baku should not have sat in judgment in any case relating to the ethnic Armenian people from Nagorno-Karabakh.”
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled in February that Vardanyan’s imprisonment in Baku was not arbitrary, contradicting earlier remarks by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, who in March called for the immediate release of all those arbitrarily detained in Azerbaijan, including ethnic Armenians.
Ocampo’s report said that Yudkivska, who was appointed to the Working Group in October 2022, is a partner at Equity Law Firm, which represents Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR in Ukraine. It also noted that her husband, Georgi Logvynskyi, whose father is from Azerbaijan, has political ties with Azerbaijani officials.
The report further suggested Yudkivska may have concealed her conflict of interest by using alternate spellings of her first name in public records. Lawyers representing Ruben Vardanyan are considering requesting a revision of the UNWGAD decision or filing a new petition demanding her recusal.
Ruben Vardanyan has been detained in Azerbaijan since the fall of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023, along with 22 other ethnic Armenians, including former Artsakh officials, prisoners of war from the 2020 war, and several civilians. Their families have reported that some detainees suffer from health issues and that there have been suicide attempts among them.
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