Azerbaijan seeks life sentence for billionaire former Karabakh official Vardanyan

Azerbaijani prosecutors on Thursday asked a Baku court for a life sentence for Ruben Vardanyan, a billionaire banker who served as a senior official in the breakaway Armenian administration of Nagorno-Karabakh before its collapse in 2023, state news agency Azertac reported.

Armenian-born Vardanyan, who previously held Russian citizenship and made his fortune in Russia, served as Karabakh's number two official in 2022 and 2023. He faces 42 charges, including terrorism.

A message posted by Vardanyan's family on Telegram on Thursday quoted him as saying he does not recognise the trial he has said is unfair, and that he regrets nothing.

Vardanyan has previously mounted two hunger strikes in custody in protest against the trial, and against treatment he describes as torture.

He was arrested in September 2023 while attempting to cross into Armenia amid a mass exodus of the region's roughly 100,000 ethnic Armenians after Azerbaijan captured the territory in a lightning offensive.

A slew of former Karabakh presidents and ministers, as well as civilian and military officials, were also arrested and taken to Baku.

Vardanyan is being tried separately to 15 other ex-Karabakh officials. Azerbaijani prosecutors said last month they would seek life terms for some, and sentences of 16 to 20 years in prison for others.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, but its mostly Armenian population broke away from Baku in the early 1990s after a lengthy war.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have said they now want to sign a treaty to end almost four decades of intermittent conflict over Karabakh, though peace talks have been slow.

Separately on Thursday, Azerbaijan's government said it was sending via Georgia the first cargo of Azerbaijan-produced fuel to Armenia, a milestone in the two countries' economic relationship.