Armenia's task is to protect Armenian prisoners in Baku at any cost - opposition MP

YEREVAN, 20 January. /ARKA/. Armenia's task is to protect Armenian prisoners held in Baku at any cost, Tigran Abrahamyan, secretary of the opposition Pativ Unem alliance in Parliament, has said.
'Under no circumstances should any Armenian be tried either in Baku or in any other country. In any situation, Armenia's task as a state is to protect people in Baku at any cost, especially when there is quite a lot of evidence of what is happening against them,’ he told reporters on Monday.
He believes that Baku seeks to get the so-called new ‘cases’ for political and propaganda reasons, and that the whole process is being used against Armenia to lay the groundwork for new aggression, rather than pursuing the case in a legal way.
Answering the question about what concrete steps the Armenian authorities can take to protect the captives, the MP said that the position of the Armenian government ‘since 23 September (the forced exodus of Armenians from Artsakh ended on 23 September 2023 - ed.) has been 80-90% in line with the opinion of Azerbaijan’.
'The Armenian authorities in their approaches should proceed, first of all, from the Armenian interests. After that we should think about those international instruments, including Armenia's capabilities, which should be used to organise this process within the framework of our approaches,’ he said.
On 20 January, the so-called trial of 15 Armenian prisoners of war began in Baku. They include former Artsakh State Minister Ruben Vardanyan, former Presidents Bako Sahakyan, Arkady Ghukasyan and Araik Harutyunyan, former Parliament Speaker David Ishkhanyan, former Foreign Minister David Babayan, former Defence Army Commander Levon Mnatsakanyan and former Deputy Commander of the Artsakh Defence Army David Manukyan. -0-