RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21343/azerbaijan-armenian-hostages
On January 17, Azerbaijan began trials of 16 Armenian captives… in military courtrooms, to which international media and observers have been denied access.

The next court hearings are slated for January 27, during which court decisions are expected to be announced. As of now, the trials are open only to Azerbaijani state media.

Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing against the Armenian people of Artsakh has been proceeding for the past four years…. Azeri soldiers posted videos and photos of themselves beheading and mutilating Armenians.

“A court hearing of my case is scheduled for January 27 at 3:00 PM. I have been informed that I am facing 42 charges, some of which carry sentences up to life imprisonment. However, I have not been granted the opportunity to fully review the official indictment. My lawyer and I were merely allowed to skim through 422 volumes of the case files, all written solely in the Azerbaijani language, which I do not understand…. Moreover, pressure has been exerted on me, my lawyer, and my interpreter to force us to backdate and sign documents, including falsified protocols and records of interrogations that never took place…. Let me reiterate: all protocols bearing my signature are falsifications.” — Ruben Vardanyan, former State Minister of Artsakh, January 16, 2025.

One of the Armenian hostages tortured in an Azeri prison is Vicken Euljekjian… [detained] 10 hours after the ceasefire had gone into effect…. A court sentenced Euljekjian to 20 years imprisonment after a short trial without adequate legal representation…. Liparit Drmeyan, an aide to Armenia’s representative to the European Court of Human Rights, said that Euljekjian did not have access to lawyers that were chosen by him…. [His wife said he] has requested a retrial and a lawyer, but the Azeri authorities refuse to meet these requests.

The Trump administration needs to make Azerbaijan release these hostages. US President Donald Trump needs to sanction Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and other Azeri officials for carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Nagorno-Karabakh that continues to threaten the territorial integrity of Armenia while refusing to release the Armenian POWs and hostages.

Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing against the Armenian people of Artsakh has been proceeding for the past four years. Pictured: The Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shusha, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) on October 13, 2020, after it was bombed by Azerbaijani forces. (Photo by Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)

Azerbaijan’s government authorities refuse to release the Armenian hostages whom they have illegally held and abused since they captured them in 2020 and 2023.

On January 17, Azerbaijan began trials of 16 Armenian captives — including the former leaders of Artsakh (Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh) — in military courtrooms, to which international media and observers have been denied access.

In a press release, the Center for Truth and Justice (CFTJ) requested that Azerbaijan allow international legal experts to observe the trials. The request remains unanswered. The next court hearings are slated for January 27, during which court decisions are expected to be announced. As of now, the trials are open only to Azerbaijani state media.

Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing against the Armenian people of Artsakh has been proceeding for the past four years. Azerbaijan – with the help of Turkey — launched an aggressive war against Artsakh that lasted 44 days — between September 27 and November 9, 2020. The aggressors committed countless crimes and indiscriminately shelled the indigenous lands of Armenians, where around 120,000 Armenians resided in the South Caucasus. Azeri soldiers posted videos and photos of themselves beheading and mutilating Armenians.

The trilateral ceasefire agreement signed by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia on November 9, 2020 was supposed to halt the war. The agreement mandates the exchange of prisoners of war (POWs), hostages and detainees, as well as the repatriation of the remains of deceased individuals. Armenia has honored the agreement, but Azerbaijan has still not.

After the Azeri bombardment of Artsakh in September 2023, Azerbaijan took even more Armenians hostage. As of now, according to official Armenian data, Azerbaijan is holding 23 prisoners of war and political prisoners. Christian Solidarity International (CSI) says that the true figure may be as high as 100, and calls for all Armenian hostages to be released without delay.

Some of the detained individuals include Davit Babayan, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Artsakh, Arkady Ghukasyan, former president of Artsakh, Arayik Harutyunyan, former president of Artsakh, Davit Ishkhanyan, chairman of the National Assembly of Artsakh, Davit Manukyan, former deputy commander of the Artsakh Armed Forces, Levon Mnatsakanyan, former commander of the Armed Forces, Bako Sahakyan, former president of Artsakh, and Ruben Vardanyan, former State Minister of Artsakh.

Vardanyan, who has been detained by Azerbaijan since September 27, 2023, issued a statement posted on social media by his family on January 16. He is being tried separately from the other 15 Armenians. He said that he had not been given enough time to prepare his defense on 42 charges, including terrorism:

“A court hearing of my case is scheduled for January 17 at 3:00 PM. I have been informed that I am facing 42 charges, some of which carry sentences up to life imprisonment. However, I have not been granted the opportunity to fully review the official indictment. My lawyer and I were merely allowed to skim through 422 volumes of the case files, all written solely in the Azerbaijani language, which I do not understand, within a very short timeframe – from December 9, 2024, to January 8, 2025. I only received the list of charges in Russian on January 8, 2025.

“Moreover pressure has been exerted on me, my lawyer, and my interpreter to force us to backdate and sign documents, include] ng falsified protocols and records of interrogations that never took place.

“I officially declare: I have given no testimony since the day of my arrest, except during the first interrogation, where I only stated my name and surname. Let me reiterate: all protocols bearing my signature are falsifications. These documents do not exist in reality. My lawyer and interpreter were coerced into signing these documents.

“I once again reiterate and state my complete innocence and the innocence of my Armenian compatriots also being held as political prisoners and demand an immediate end to this politically motivated case against us.”

The court denied Vardanyan’s request to merge his case with those of the others. His trial is set to resume on January 27.

The people of Artsakh democratically elected their representatives through a direct vote. The term “elected representatives of Nagorno Karabakh” is recorded in several documents of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

The former leaders of Artsakh are not the only Armenian hostages held by Azerbaijan. Since 2020, Azerbaijan has taken many Armenian civilians and soldiers hostage during and in the aftermath of Azeri military attacks. Azerbaijan tortured and murdered many of them.

One of the Armenian hostages tortured in an Azeri prison is Vicken Euljekjian, a dual citizen of Armenia and Lebanon. Azeri soldiers detained him on November 10, 2020, near the Armenian city of Shushi in Artsakh, currently occupied by Azerbaijan. The detention reportedly took place 10 hours after the ceasefire had gone into effect. Soon after, he was transferred, along with other Armenian hostages, to a prison in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital. A court sentenced Euljekjian to 20 years imprisonment after a short trial without adequate legal representation.

Armenia’s government and human rights groups condemned the trial as a travesty of justice. Liparit Drmeyan, an aide to Armenia’s representative to the European Court of Human Rights, said that Euljekjian did not have access to lawyers that were chosen by him.

Euljekjian’s wife, Linda Euljekjian, told Gatestone Institute that he is suffering from serious physical and mental health problems in prison, and has requested a retrial and a lawyer, but the Azeri authorities refuse to meet these requests.

Luciana Minassian, a lawyer and specialist on international law who monitors the cases of the Armenian hostages in Azerbaijan, told Gatestone:

“Trials that lack transparency and fail to meet the standards of due process transform the judicial system into a tool for political retribution. This not only violates the Geneva Conventions but also damages the credibility of the prosecuting state, inviting international condemnation and setting a dangerous precedent for future conflicts. Releasing POWs immediately is not just a legal obligation—it is a moral imperative. Compliance with the Geneva Conventions preserves the integrity of international law, reinforces mutual respect among warring parties, and ensures that states remain accountable to their commitments.

“However, Azerbaijan continues to ill-treat and even torture the Armenian hostages it illegally holds.”

Despite the November 9, 2020 ceasefire agreement, the Azeri aggression or threats against Armenia have never ended. On September 12, 2022, Azerbaijan launched a deadly attack across several regions of Armenia’s eastern border, killing more than 200 Armenian soldiers and capturing parts of southern Armenia. During that military offensive, Azeri soldiers raped, slaughtered, and mutilated an Armenian female soldier. They then posted on social media images of her abused and tortured body.

In December 2022, Azerbaijan started its starvation siege targeting Artsakh. For nine months, Armenians in Artsakh were blockaded by Azeri forces and deprived of sufficient food, medication and their right to freely travel. And on September 19 and 20, 2023, Azerbaijan bombed Artsakh and forcibly displaced the entire Armenian population – around 120,000 people.

Kathryn Hemmer, a human rights scholar and Genocide Studies Program student fellow at Yale University, wrote of Artsakh:

“The territory, which declared independence in 1991, was home to a predominantly ethnic Armenian population until Azerbaijan launched a 10-month blockade and military assault in 2023. Now, the continued imprisonment of many of Nagorno-Karabakh’s leaders has further victimized a population that just experienced what is arguably one of the most overlooked episodes of ethnic cleansing in recent history.”

The Trump administration needs to make Azerbaijan release these hostages. US President Donald Trump needs to sanction Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and other Azeri officials for carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Nagorno-Karabakh that continues to threaten the territorial integrity of Armenia while refusing to release the Armenian POWs and hostages.

Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/23/the-grooming-gangs-scandal-is-far-worse-than-you-think/

The details of what grooming gangs did to young British girls are literally unbelievable. They are so grotesque that it is truly hard to believe that one human could do such things to another, never mind to young girls.

That is why court transcripts are such valuable documents. Courts are one of the last places in the UK where you will hear the truth. In trials, there is generally little tolerance of ideology or cliché and claims must be backed up by hard evidence.

When some of the grooming gangs were eventually brought to court and the truth was dragged into the light, their crimes were just as bad or even worse than campaigners had originally claimed. It was easy for many of us to be sceptical about the full extent of the scandal. After all, there have been many cases of grisly sounding crimes that have turned out to be hoaxes, designed to make some kind of ideological point. Like when Jussie Smollett, a gay black actor, falsely claimed he was attacked in liberal Chicago by Trump supporters, who supposedly put a noose around his neck and threw bleach at him. Or when the white players of the Duke University lacrosse team were accused by Crystal Mangum of raping her and using their influence to avoid prosecution – only for Mangum to reveal, 18 years later, that she had lied.

The grooming-gangs scandal sounds like a similarly fantastical story. Mostly Muslim men targeted primarily white British girls and subjected them to rape, trafficking, beatings and forced substance addiction. Meanwhile, police forces ignored and sometimes even facilitated this abuse, afraid that intervening would lead to them being called racist.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/iran-coming-apart-at-the-seams/

Economically, Iran is in the process of coming apart. Its GDP steadily sinks. More than 40% of Iranians are now living below the poverty line. The rial is at an historic low, having lost 25% of its value just since September; it now stands at 820,000 rials to a dollar. Since the establishment of the Islamic government in 1979, the Iranian currency has undergone an 11,000-fold decline in value.

Politically Iran is on its back foot. It has seen all of its major allies, that were formerly part of Iran’s “Shi’a crescent” — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the Assad regime in Syria —fall away. In Gaza, Hamas is being systematically dismantled by the IDF, with 20,000 of its fighters killed and many more wounded. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has been battered by the IDF. Four thousand of its operatives have been killed, thousands more wounded, and 80% of its once-formidable arsenal of rockets and missiles destroyed by the IAF. Hezbollah had to beg for a ceasefire that requires it to remove all of its men and weapons north of the Litani River. In Syria, the rebels have toppled the Assad despotism, and once the loyal ally of Iran, Syria has now become the archenemy of the Islamic Republic, precisely because Iran for so long supported the Assad regime. Iran invested $50 billion in keeping Assad in power; now that $50 billion has gone up in smoke, and the Iranian people are keenly aware of that loss, which has enraged many of them.

More on the current dismal of Iran’s economy, its military weakness, and the growing fury of its population with the regime of the mullahs, can be found here: “$50 billion to Syria vanished into thin air: Unrest in Iran grows over economic turmoil – interview,” by Peled Arbeli, Jerusalem Post, January 10, 2025:

Iran’s public discontent surged in recent weeks as economic hardships, including widespread power outages and rising inflation, fueled calls for change, Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) researcher Benny Sabti told Maariv on Friday.

https://pjmedia.com/david-solway-2/2025/01/22/danielle-smith-the-only-grown-up-in-the-room-n4936261

Even as most of the country’s provincial premiers and Prime Minister Trudeau are scheming a trade war with the U.S. over President Trump’s threat of imposing tariffs on Canadian goods, Canada’s jingoist glitterati refuse to credit the insight and unflinching character of the one premier, Alberta’s Danielle Smith, who is largely responsible for striving to prevent the disaster. Smith had met with Trump, various governors, senators, and congressional leaders, engaging in rational and mature pre-negotiation discussions treating the contentious tariff issue. She did not come to brandish a cudgel. She came to talk.

The typical Canadian stance, however, was made of equal dollops of bloviation, shortsightedness, and self-infatuation, as press and politicians ganged up on Smith for refusing to join Team Canada’s self-destructive trade vendetta against the threat of U.S. tariffs. Canada’s newspaper of record The Globe and Mail is representative of this mentally sluggish attitude: “Smith is fighting Ottawa rather than Trump’s tariff. This will cost us all.” 

The disingenuous nonsense is palpable since a lax and delinquent Ottawa presiding over a porous border is the culprit here, not Washington. Canada’s new $1.3 billion border security package pales before the $20 billion it sent to defend Ukraine’s borders. For Canada’s primary leftist rag the Toronto Star, Smith’s motives can only be sordid and perhaps even treacherous: “Danielle Smith cozies up to Trump to sell more oil and avoid tariffs”…”Alberta’s premier is playing right into Donald Trump’s hands,” etc. etc. One waits eagerly for such people to crawl back into the woodwork.