Veronika Zonabend, the wife of unjustly imprisoned former Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) State Minister Ruben Vardanyan, issued a statement on Friday, November 6, 2026 revealing that Azerbaijani media has published material suggesting she could be arrested if she travels to Baku to visit the 19 Armenian hostages, reports Zartonk Media.
Zonabend also disclosed that Azerbaijan’s Human Rights Commissioner Sabina Aliyeva has not replied to 5 months of appeals, that Vardanyan’s local lawyer in Baku has been denied access to him since August 25, 2026, and that the Pashinyan government has not named an official responsible for the hostages or answered her written request for diplomatic assistance.
Zonabend said her international women’s humanitarian delegation remains ready to travel to Baku as soon as access to the Armenian hostages and security arrangements for its members can be agreed. “We bear responsibility for each of them and therefore consider it necessary to reach these agreements first,” she said. The delegation includes women from different countries known for their civic and professional work, who had intended to visit all the Armenian hostages at the Umbaki Penitentiary Complex and to deliver letters, photographs, and parcels from their loved ones.
Zonabend disclosed that since June 2026, she has appealed several times to Azerbaijan’s Human Rights Commissioner Sabina Aliyeva, proposing 3 alternative visit formats: a visit by the full delegation, a visit by a smaller group, or a visit accompanied by a representative of Aliyeva’s own office. She also asked for security arrangements to be agreed. “Unfortunately, we have not yet received a reply,” she said.
Zonabend then revealed that Azerbaijani media has been publishing material suggesting she could be arrested if she enters the country. “In the meantime, publications appeared in Azerbaijani media suggesting that I could be arrested if I came to the country,” she said. She also disclosed that since August 25, 2026, Vardanyan’s local lawyer in Baku has been denied access to him. “We hope this issue will be resolved,” she said.
Zonabend’s statement also exposed the silence of the Pashinyan government on her request for diplomatic assistance. She confirmed that she and attorney Siranush Sahakyan, who represents the Armenian hostages before the European Court of Human Rights, met at Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on August 17, 2026. Since that meeting, Zonabend said, a responsible official has still not been named by the Armenian government, and her written request has gone unanswered.
Zonabend pointed to the contradiction between Yerevan’s economic engagement with Baku and its inaction on the Armenian hostages. “Economic contacts between Armenia and Azerbaijan are developing, and Armenian delegations visit Azerbaijan,” she said. “This demonstrates that all the prerequisites for organising a humanitarian visit are in place. A visit to the Armenian hostages should be included on the agenda of one of these trips.”
Zonabend announced that on October 1, 2026, she handed 1,254 letters collected for all the Armenian hostages to the Government of Armenia with a request to help deliver them to Baku. “We decided not to hold back the letters that the delegation was to deliver in person,” she said. “We hope that every letter will reach its recipient. Each hostage must receive these words of support and know that they are remembered.”
Zonabend closed her statement with a message of persistence. “Our goal remains the same: to see our loved ones and to restore the hostages’ contact with their families. We will continue this work until all of them return home. We understand that this path may be long, but we believe it will lead to a just resolution.”
Zonabend’s November 6 statement is the latest in a sustained advocacy campaign on behalf of the Armenian hostages held in Baku. On June 15, 2026, at Vardanyan’s request, she announced the initiative to organize an international women’s humanitarian delegation. On July 8, 2026, she sent open letters to 4 senior officials whose engagement she said would be essential: Azerbaijan’s Human Rights Commissioner Sabina Aliyeva, International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas. On September 8, 2026, she sent an open letter to Security Council Secretary Alen Simonyan requesting to accompany him on his potential Baku trip alongside other hostage families.
Her campaign has run in parallel with repeated public statements from Vardanyan himself. On May 7, 2026, Vardanyan issued his “Have You No Shame?” statement from Baku prison, publicly rebuking the Armenian government for its failure to defend the hostages. On May 25, 2026, Vardanyan marked his 58th birthday in captivity with an audio address calling Armenia’s May 28 military parade “immoral” and branding Prime Minister Pashinyan a “liar, fantasist, and plagiarist.” On September 16, 2026, Vardanyan recorded a public appeal to Sabina Aliyeva from his prison cell, documenting specific violations of Azerbaijan’s own legal code in the treatment of the 19 hostages, saying “However long we still spend in Umbaki, please comply with your own laws.”
On October 28, 2026, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan told parliament that Armenia’s third-country efforts to arrange consular visits to the Armenian hostages had failed because Azerbaijan told the partner countries to “stay away,” calling the collapse “the bitter reality.”
The 19 Armenian hostages are held at the Umbaki Penitentiary Complex in the Qaradag district of Baku. 16 have been sentenced after sham trials in the Baku Military Court. 8 are former Artsakh political and military leaders, seized by Azerbaijani forces in September 2023 as they fled alongside more than 120,000 Armenians forcibly displaced from their ancestral homeland in Azerbaijan’s documented ethnic cleansing of occupied Artsakh.
On February 5, 2026, the Baku Military Court sentenced former Artsakh President Arayik Harutyunyan, former Foreign Minister David Babayan, former National Assembly Speaker Davit Ishkhanyan, former Defense Army commander Levon Mnatsakanyan, and former deputy commander Davit Manukyan to life imprisonment. Former Artsakh Presidents Arkadi Ghukasyan and Bako Sahakyan received 20-year terms. Vardanyan was tried separately and sentenced to 20 years on February 17, 2026. Civilian hostages Madat Babayan and Melikset Pashayan received 19-year terms, Garik Martirosyan received 18 years, Davit Alahverdyan and Levon Balayan received 16 years, and Erik Ghazaryan, Gurgen Stepanyan, and Vasil Beglaryan received 15 years. Amnesty International called the verdicts a travesty and a mockery of justice.
Azerbaijan expelled the International Committee of the Red Cross in September 2025, ending the last independent access to the Armenian hostages. Former International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo published a legal opinion in August 2023 concluding that the nine-month Azerbaijani blockade of Artsakh that preceded the September 2023 ethnic cleansing constituted genocide under the Genocide Convention. The International Court of Justice ordered Azerbaijan on November 17, 2023, by 13 votes to 2, to ensure that Armenians who left Artsakh after September 19, 2023 could return in a safe, unimpeded, and expeditious manner. Azerbaijan has never complied.
