Author: Kajoyan Gevork

The Armenian National Committee of America – Western Region vehemently denounces the ongoing human rights violations perpetrated against Armenian prisoners of war, hostages, and other detainees held illegally by Azerbaijan since September 2020. On the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, ANCA-WR emphasizes the need to address the heinous violations of international humanitarian law by the Azerbaijani armed forces and government, demanding the immediate release of all Armenian POWs, and calling upon the US Government and the international community to hold Azerbaijan accountable for violating the seventh clause of the November 9 tripartite statement regarding the immediate release of captured POWs.

On September 27, 2020, Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey and foreign mercenaries, launched a devastating military assault on Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), resulting in the merciless deaths of thousands and the forced displacement of tens of thousands of Armenians from Artsakh. Despite the precedents set by international law and the terms of the tripartite statement signed on November 9, 2020, which underscored the immediate exchange of POWs and other detainees, Azerbaijan flagrantly and unlawfully continues to hold dozens of Armenian POWs and civilian detainees, shamelessly misrepresenting the status of some as “terrorists” to legitimize their continued captivity in direct violation of the Geneva Convention (III). 

Numerous credible reports, including those from Human Rights Watch and Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, have documented alarming war crimes and acts of torture committed by Azerbaijani armed forces against Armenian combatants and civilians. These include physical abuse, humiliation, beheadings, summary executions, and the desecration of human remains.

In August 2022, civil society organizations in Armenia published a comprehensive fact-finding report revealing at least 19 confirmed cases of extrajudicial executions of Armenian POWs and detainees at the hands of the Azerbaijani armed forces. Furthermore, the representative of Armenian POWs at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Siranush Sahakyan, confirmed that several fact-finding efforts were able to verify at least 80 more cases of captivity of Armenian POWs, with the possibility of additional unverified cases. Sahakyan emphasized that about 40 individuals were killed or shot after being taken captive by Azerbaijani armed forces during and in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 Conflict. These findings highlight the urgency and seriousness of the situation, as Azerbaijan continues to withhold acknowledgment or disclosure of the status of these individuals, violating international regulations.

Since the conclusion of the 2020 Conflict, Azerbaijan has continuously captured and extrajudicially executed Armenian POWs, including within the sovereign territories of the Republic of Armenia as recently as in May 2023. In September 2022, when Azerbaijan violated the territorial integrity of Armenia, Azerbaijani soldiers cold-bloodedly executed at least seven Armenian POWs as documented by Human Rights Watch.

The continued detention of POWs by Azerbaijan raises serious doubts about its commitment to a lasting peace settlement in the region. In fact, Azerbaijan has constantly used POWs as a bargaining chip within peace negotiations with the Republic of Armenia. In contrast to Azerbaijan’s blatant disregard of the seventh clause of the November 9 statement, Armenia has fulfilled its obligations of the exchange by returning all Azerbaijani POWs, demonstrating its commitment to international law and peace-building efforts.

On the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, ANCA-WR reiterates its commitment to standing in solidarity with all victims of torture and human rights abuses, and emphasizes the need to hold Azerbaijan accountable for its countless war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law, including the extrajudicial execution, arbitrary detention, and mistreatment of Armenian POWs and detainees.

The Armenian National Committee of America-Western Region is the largest and most influential Armenian-American grassroots advocacy organization in the Western United States. Working in coordination with a network of offices, chapters, and supporters throughout the Western United States and affiliated organizations around the country, the ANCA Western Region advances the concerns of the Armenian American community on a broad range of issues.

Press release drafted by Sonia Meroian who is a member of ANCA Western Region’s 2023 Summer Internship Program. She recently graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and a concentration in International Relations. Her primary research interests include the study of international conflicts and the use of explosive weapons in populated areas (EWIPA).

 19:34,

YEREVAN, JUNE 23, ARMENPRESS. Maria Zakharova, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, stated that Azerbaijan's blocking of the entrance to the Lachin Corridor is a violation of the joint declaration of the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, which leads to deepening of tensions, ARMENPRESS reports, Zakharova said, commenting on the situation around the Lachin corridor.

"In connection with the closing of the entrance to the Lachin Corridor by Azerbaijan, we draw attention to the fact that such actions are a violation of the provisions of the November 9, 2020 declaration of the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Such steps lead to the escalation of tension and do not contribute to maintaining a normal atmosphere in the process of normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia with the support of Russia," said Zakharova.

Russia calls on Baku to completely unblock traffic through the Lachin Corridor, and also emphasizes the importance of the consistent implementation of the tripartite agreements.

Yesterday, June 22, the Azerbaijani side resorted to another provocation and criminal action, closing the only road between Artsakh and Armenia (Lachin Corridor) with a concrete barrier.

"In fact, in addition to the illegal checkpoint and blocking the road with armored vehicles, Azerbaijan is now demonstratively blocking the road, preventing any movement, including by the Red Cross and peacekeepers.

This incident once again demonstrates the criminal goals of the Azerbaijani authorities to completely isolate the people of Artsakh from the outside world and to use all methods of repression," said the press release of Artsakh's information headquarters.

 14:09, 14 June 2023

YEREVAN, JUNE 14, ARMENPRESS. Armenia expects international partners to unequivocally condemn the latest Azerbaijani aggression against its sovereign territory when two foreign nationals were wounded.

“Impunity gave birth to new crimes against sovereign territory and peaceful people of the Republic of Armenia. Today, in the morning, Azerbaijani armed forces continued yesterday’s attacks on the plant being built with US – Armenian investment and wounded 2 foreign citizens who were working on the construction. We are still looking forward to unequivocal condemnation from all our partners of this aggression, which is happening during the ongoing peace negotiations,” Ambassador-at-large Edmon Marukyan tweeted.

Azerbaijani forces opened fire at the construction site of a steelworks in the Armenian village of Yeraskh on June 14. Two Indian construction workers were wounded in the shooting.

 17:37,

YEREVAN, JUNE 16, ARMENPRESS. Michael Rubin, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, says that the Biden Administration ought to immediately cease all military and other non-humanitarian assistance to Azerbaijan after it attacked the U.S.-affiliated company construction site in the village of Yeraskh.

Below is the full article written by Rubin.

“For most people, Yeraskh is just a rest stop on the road between Yerevan and southern Armenia. For those who look, however, the signs of conflict in the South Caucasus are evident. Less than 200 yards after the road ends is the border of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani military posts overlook the town. Mount Ararat, long part of Armenia until the Turkish-led Armenian Genocide ethnically cleansed the region, dominates the horizon to the West. The Turkish frontier is just four miles away. Just a mile or so further is Iran’s border. Just outside of town, a berm interspersed with bunkers built in the early 1990s rises between the road and the Azerbaijani border to protect drivers from Azerbaijani snipers. A Russian flag flaps in the wind at a memorial just a few hundred feet from the road where, just over two and a half years ago, an Azerbaijani soldier shot down a Russian helicopter on the last day of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.

I drove through Yeraskh just hours after Azerbaijan fired upon a vehicle carrying two Indian employees of a US-funded metallurgy company in the town. The attack was unprovoked.

It also highlights two realities. The first is that, contrary to the State Department’s certification that Azerbaijan has foresworn military action to resolve its dispute with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, it continues to use its military to terrorize.

The second is that Azerbaijan may use the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute as an excuse, but its target is Armenia proper. Yeraskh is Armenia proper, officially disputed by no other country. I continued along the road to Jermuk, an Armenian spa town dominated by a ski resort and natural spring, whose mineral-rich waters allegedly have healing properties. In September 2022, Azerbaijani forces launched a surprise attack on the town using drones, artillery, and sniper fire. The town is an economic hub, but has no military base nor is it in disputed territory. Despite this, Azerbaijan continues to occupy over 23 square miles on the town’s outskirts, putting most townsmen and visitors under imminent threat of sniper fire.

The State Department may tweet that it is “deeply concerned” but its words are meaningless and its actions increasingly in contravention of US law that prohibits allowing military assistance to Azerbaijan so long as Azerbaijan harbors military ambitions.

With Azerbaijan now attacking American interests within the sovereign territory of Armenia, it is now time for the Biden administration to revoke the waiver on Section 907 and immediately cease all military and other non-humanitarian assistance to Azerbaijan. Anything less would be an affront to Congress and will suggest President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are uninterested in defending American interests, American lives, or abiding by American law. To respond with rhetoric alone would also set back peace by convincing Azerbaijan that it faces no real consequences for continued aggression.”

Azerbaijan Suspected in Hacking of Armenian Officials With Israeli NSO Spyware

Thirteen Armenian officials, human rights activists, journalists and academics had their phones infected with the Israeli NSO Group’s spyware after recent fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan has reportedly used Pegasus in the past against its own citizens

Oded Yaron

Thirteen government officials, human rights activists, journalists and academics from Armenia fell victim to spying by a foreign country using Pegasus spyware from the Israeli NSO Group, a new report from Amnesty International’s Security Lab and The Citizen Lab released on Thursday found.

Among the victims were the spokeswoman of Armenia’s Foreign Ministry, who is now an NGO worker, and then-Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) of Armenia, who investigated suspicions of war crimes against Azerbaijan.

The researchers found circumstantial evidence linking the espionage to the war in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, and suspect that the Azerbaijan is behind the hacking.

The roots of the affair go back to November 2021, after Apple sent the first round of warnings to some of those attacked, telling them they had been the victims of a cyberattack by a foreign nation.

The forensic examination of their phones was conducted by The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Access Now digital civil rights organization, Amnesty Tech and CyberHUB-AM, the emergency cyber response center for civil society organizations in Armenia.

Azerbaijan has previously been suspected of deploying Pegasus spyware against journalists and civil society activists in its own country, after the infections were exposed in July 2021 as part of the Pegasus project, led by Forbidden Stories and Amnesty, and in cooperation with Haaretz-TheMarker.

President Ilham Aliyev has total control over the country, and his rule has a long history of arrests and repression of civil rights and opposition activists. In 2017, the U.S. State Department released a harsh report on the state of the LGBTQ community in Azerbaijan, which suffers from persecution, murder and disappearances, arrests, torture and discrimination.

NSO was not the only Israeli company that supplied advanced military and intelligence systems to Azerbaijan. Israel has consolidated its strategic ties with Azerbaijan in recent years, exporting billions of dollars of arms to the country, which shares a border with its regional foe Iran.

But this time the targets of the spying were Armenians. Forensic evidence and the identity of the victims indicate that the government of Azerbaijan was likely behind the spying campaign.

The researchers said the spyware campaign began as a result of the tensions in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a disputed enclave with a mostly ethnic Armenian population and a separatist government in the heart of Azerbaijan. During the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, also known as the 44-day War, in 2020, Azerbaijan captured large amounts of territory and the defeat led to a severe political crisis in Armenia.

A few days after the cease-fire agreement, it was reported that Armenia’s National Security Service had thwarted an assassination attempt against the Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. The prime minister then dissolved the parliament and announced new elections in June 2021, which he won.

“We identified the first wave of infections in May to July 2021 at the time that Armenia was in a severe constitutional and political crisis over the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh,” Natalia Krapiva, the tech legal counsel for Access Now told Haaretz.

The talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia under the auspices of Russia continued during that period, and the prime minister’s resignation only made the political uncertainty even worse. Acting Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazyan resigned at the end of May, after he harshly criticized his own government’s policies. That same day, the telephone of Anna Naghdalyan, the then-spokeswoman of the Armenian Foreign Ministry, was infected, and she was not the only one.

A week later, all of the foreign minister’s deputies announced their resignations. Twenty-four hours earlier, according to the Citizen Labs report, Naghdalyan’s phone was infected for a second time. “I had a lot of important information, professional and also personal,” Naghdalyan told Haaretz. “I don’t know how much information they obtained, but this case proves that none of us are safe. Such gadgets have become an inseparable part of our lives – and such discoveries cause a deep feeling of insecurity.”

Among the victims whose phones were found to be infected with the Pegasus spyware were two Armenian academics specializing in international relations and Azerbaijan, and two United Nations employees, whose identities were not revealed.

Kristine Grigoryan, the Human Rights Defender of Armenia until January 2023, told Haaretz that additional infections occurred close to later flare-ups in Nagorno-Karabakh. Grigoryan worked in the office of Armenia’s human rights ombudsman, an accredited national institute of the United Nations, and she was responsible for investigating suspicions of war crimes.

She was tasked with the role after videos circulated in 2022 showing Azerbaijan commandos killing Armenian prisoners of war.

One of the clips depicts the abuse of a female Armenian sniper who was captured and later murdered. “She had three children,” said Grigoryan. “The family came to my office and begged for us to stop the distribution of the videos, but we couldn’t do anything.”

Due to her special role in investigating Azerbaijani war crimes, Grigoryan became a well-known figure in the media – and as a result was also the target Azerbaijan’s spying, said the researchers. In October 2022, she was notified by Apple that her phone had been infected. In December, her phone was infected a second time.

“Helping attack those already experiencing violence is a despicable act, even for a company like NSO Group,” said Natalia Krapiva from Access Now. “Inserting harmful spyware technology into the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict shows a complete disregard for safety and welfare, and truly unmasks how depraved priorities can be. People must come before profit — it’s time to disarm spyware globally.”

NSO Group responded to Haaretz' questions:

While NSO is unable to confirm or deny the identity of its customers, past reports proved that various groups continue to produce inconclusive reports that are unable to differentiate between the various cyber tools in use. As always, these groups refuse to share their reports with the company, hence we cannot address any specific allegations we didn’t see.

NSO has the industry’s leading compliance and human rights policy and as always will investigate all credible allegations of misuse. Past NSO investigations have resulted in the termination of multiple contracts regarding the improper use of our technologies.

NSO has repeatedly called for a global regulatory cyber intelligence framework to address the responsibility of governmental operators to prevent technological misuse.

Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, the Head of Amnesty Tech Security Lab, responded to The comapny's claims about the report:

“NSO Group refuses to engage with or acknowledge the overwhelming weight of forensic evidence proving ongoing Pegasus abuses published by Amnesty International, Citizen Lab and civil society partners. Time and again this research been later validated by subsequent official investigations, government statements and major technology vendors.”

“NSO Group’s evidently inadequate human rights policy is little comfort to the journalists and human rights defenders who continue to be victimized by the company’s spyware

almost a decade after abuses were confirmed. We urgently need a ban on these most invasive forms of spyware to stop the ongoing crisis enabled by this industry.”

The Azerbaijan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israel’s Defense Ministry have not responded to requests from Haaretz.