As of now, we have around 156 prisoners who have been repatriated thanks to the invested legal and political efforts, but along with this, there are many prisoners who are still being held in Azerbaijan, lawyer Siranush Sahakyan, representative of the interests of Armenian prisoners at the European Court, informed today.

"Of course, it is an extremely important problem that we have about 8 dozen prisoners who are not officially accepted by the Azerbaijani authorities and have been forced to disappear in the process. The number of prisoners officially held in Azerbaijan before the resumption of the war on September 13 was 33, and in the post-war period, we have about 20 new cases of captivity. The vast majority of them have already been formalized, but answers are expected in the near future through the ECHR and we will be able to confirm more clearly; to the captives in recent incidents," he said.

Siranush Sahakyan mentioned that they act on the basis of individual complaints, representing the prisoners of war and their families.

"Also, these efforts are complemented by other lawyers. At the same time, there is an interstate process in the ECHR itself, the subject of which includes the issue of prisoners, their treatment, and repatriation. The issue of captives is also indirectly discussed at the International Court of Justice in the context of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. From this point of view, I think that the legal efforts have been quite intensive, in a certain sense also unprecedented, because Armenia has previously refrained from filing interstate cases against any state with human rights issues. "This is the first time that the state acts so actively in international legal instances," she said.

According to Siranush Sahakyan, perhaps the only gap that can be filled in the legal process is to initiate a process within the framework of the Convention on the Prohibition of Hostages at the UN Court of Justice because the processes showed that the captives stopped being just captives and are being held as hostages, and are used to increase pressure on the RA authorities.

"Their repatriation is directly related to the solution of political issues. Therefore, there are sufficient facts to claim that they are hostages Legal processes should be combined with political and diplomatic work. Official, diplomatic efforts should be of great importance here, but also the activities carried out by human rights structures when international structures and states will also feel the public pressure regarding the need to act, both from Armenia's internal audience and internationally," Sahakyan emphasized.