Siranush Sahakyan, the representative of the interests of prisoners and prisoners of war in the ECHR, considers the sentencing of Armenian POWs in Azerbaijan to 4 years and 6 months as an imitation and a tactical step to save the country's reputation. In the ECHR Sahakyan stressed that regardless of the six-month or four-year sentence, the Armenian POWs were and still are subject to immediate return.

"From the beginning, we had the position that these were fake criminal cases. Our boys were not involved in any activities other than defending the homeland. Moreover, they did not act on their own initiative but were drafted into the army and received an order from the command to carry out a service in a place that was reaffirmed by the November 9 statement as within the borders of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic. It was not handed over to Azerbaijan as a result of the war," Sahakyan said.," Sahakyan said.

According to the human rights activist, the Azerbaijani authorities are under various pressures, with international partners sending signals that the absence of other acts of terrorism is obvious.

"Now they have made some accusations tactically, but for political reasons, they are still holding an action that has not been done - crossing the border illegally. Do you understand the context - the territories that Azerbaijan declares as Azerbaijani? By doing so, Azerbaijan is threatening the Armenians, the Armenian servicemen, that if they carry out a task in that area on the basis of an order, they may be threatened with criminal prosecution," Sahakyan said.

The representative of the interests of the POWs at the ECHR stressed that they will continue to talk about the illegal conviction of prisoners of war in the European Court.

"We do not accept it in any way, we do not recognize either the trial or any verdict given as a result of this trial," Sahakyan added.

To the question of why the Azerbaijani authorities retreated if the POWs were presented as saboteurs, terrorists, threatened with life imprisonment, but in the end, they were sentenced to four years or six months in prison, Siranush Sahakyan answered that it was an imitation, as there are real chances It's going to fall apart and their professional team understands that.

"First of all, they will try to legitimize the accusation of crossing the border illegally. They will show that we really acted independently, but by acting independently, there are actions that they have committed, for which the prisoners of war are condemned. As they know very well that the whole judicial process will be internationally invalidated, they are trying to sacrifice a part of it, in order to legalize the other one," Sahakyan said.