By Mark Dovich
Three Nagorno-Karabakh residents were detained Monday by Azerbaijani border guards as they tried to cross into Armenia as part of a group of evacuees escorted by Russian peacekeepers.
What happened?
Azerbaijani news sites close to the government said three unnamed young men were arrested as they tried to pass through Azerbaijan’s checkpoint on the Lachin corridor, the sole overland route connecting Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia.
Azerbaijani media claimed the men are featured in a 2021 social media video that appears to show a group of amateur football players from the town of Martuni stepping on the Azerbaijani flag.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s state-run InfoCenter confirmed one resident was detained and named him as 22-year-old Alen Sargsyan, a student who planned to go to university in Yerevan. The InfoCenter said two other people from the convoy “did not cross the illegal checkpoint” after questioning and were not immediately able to be located. They were not named.
What’s the context?
Sargsyan’s arrest marks the second time a Nagorno-Karabakh resident has been detained trying to pass through the checkpoint, which Azerbaijan set up in April in violation of the ceasefire declaration that ended the 2020 war.
Last month, Azerbaijani border guards pulled 68-year-old Vagif Khachatryan from a convoy of vehicles belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross and charged him with committing war crimes during the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in the early 1990s.
Last week, Russian peacekeepers moved more than three dozen people from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, the first time Azerbaijan allowed Russia to use the Lachin corridor in more than two months. That evacuation took place without incident.
What’s the background?
For most of Azerbaijan’s blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan has allowed only a limited number of vehicles belonging to the peacekeepers and the Red Cross to use the Lachin corridor.
More than eight months of near-total isolation has pushed Nagorno-Karabakh’s roughly 120,000 Armenians to the brink of famine and prompted warnings of genocide by the former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.
As of Monday afternoon, Russia had not commented publicly on Sargsyan’s detention.
UPDATE:
Hours following the kidnapping, Azerbaijan’s Office of the Prosecutor General reported in a statement that “the criminal proceedings against the Armenian football players arrested at the Lachin border point has been halted.”
Prosecutors have ordered a ten day administrative detention for the three young men, after which, according to the statement, the detained individuals will leave Azerbaijan.
