Davit Ishkhanyan rebuts fabricated charges in Baku court

(Horizon Weekly) – The staged trial against former political and military leaders of Artsakh resumed on December 26 at Azerbaijan’s Baku Military Court, where David Ishkhanyan, former Speaker of the Artsakh National Assembly, delivered what authorities termed a final statement in a process widely condemned as an illegal and politically motivated show trial.

According to Azerbaijan’s state-run agency Azertag, Ishkhanyan presented counterarguments rejecting the prosecution’s accusations. Azerbaijani authorities once again withheld any direct quotations or substantive details from his remarks, continuing a pattern of tightly controlled information and lack of transparency that has marked the proceedings since their outset.

The case forms part of a broader campaign by the Azerbaijani regime targeting former Artsakh officials who have been held in prolonged detention without due process. At the previous court session on December 25, former Artsakh presidents Arkadi Ghukasyan and Bako Sahakyan, along with former Artsakh Defense Army commander Levon Mnatsakanyan, categorically denied all charges, dismissing them as politically fabricated and legally baseless.

One day after addressing the court, Ishkhanyan marked his birthday on December 27 while imprisoned in Baku, entering yet another year of captivity. He has now been held for more than two years, alongside other former Artsakh leaders, in what has been repeatedly denounced as a sham judicial process designed to legitimize Azerbaijan’s aggression and erase Artsakh’s political leadership.

A senior member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Bureau, Ishkhanyan served for years as the party’s representative in Artsakh. His continued detention follows the September 2023 military assault by Azerbaijan that forcibly displaced the entire Armenian population of Artsakh, an act widely recognized as ethnic cleansing. The ongoing trials are viewed as a continuation of that campaign, aimed at criminalizing Artsakh’s leadership after the destruction of its institutions.