Armenian News-NEWS.am has received exactly two months later the response to its inquiry from the Republic of Armenia Ministry of Foreign Affairs (RA MFA) regarding the Armenian prisoners held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.

According to Armenia’s law on freedom of information, a response to a written inquiry is provided within 5 days of receiving the inquiry. And if additional work is required to provide the information specified in the written inquiry, then that information is provided to the applicant within 30 days of receiving the inquiry, about which the applicant is notified in writing within 5 days of receiving the inquiry, indicating the reasons for the delay and the final timeframe for providing the information.

To our question, which we had sent to the Armenian MFA on March 16, we received a response in very general wording two months later, on May 15.

The preparation of the “on-call” response provided certainly did not require a 30-day period.

After sending our inquiry, we also did not receive any notification from the MFA about the late provision of the response and its reasons.

It turns out that we are simply dealing with either official negligence, or unprofessionalism, or this is simply a manifestation of the attitude of the Armenian MFA regarding the fate of the Armenian captives in Baku.

We present below Armenian News-NEWS.am’s inquiry of March 16 and the response of the Armenian MFA sent on May 16.

Question: [FM] Mr. [Ararat] Mirzoyan, today the family of [former Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) state minister and well-known businessman and philanthropist] Ruben Vardanyan [who is in prison in Baku] made a rather worrying statement, publishing Vardanyan’s voice message addressed to the Azerbaijani ombudsman. In the published recording, one can hear how his call is interrupted when he tries to make a public appeal to the Azerbaijani Ombudsman Sabina Aliyeva. It is also worrying that it has been more than a month since the “verdicts” were published, but they have not yet received the texts of the verdicts. This may deprive them of the opportunity to appeal them. In such a situation, what actions is Armenia’s foreign policy department taking to protect the rights of its citizens?

Armenian MFA response: In response to your inquiry, we inform that addressing the issue of Armenian prisoners and detainees in Azerbaijan continues to be at the focus of the RA Foreign Ministry’s attention, being regularly raised during bilateral meetings with Azerbaijan’s international partners, as well as at multilateral platforms.

In particular, the RA Foreign Ministry also regularly has meetings with representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross [(ICRC)], and discusses the issue of visiting the [Armenian] prisoners and detainees in Baku. Despite the closure of the ICRC Baku office, the latter visited them on December 24-25, 2025, and work is being done to ensure continuity in this regard.

In the context of the commitment to establishing peace and its consolidation, as well as ongoing dialogue and confidence-building measures, dialogue continues with the Azerbaijani side to secure the release of detained Armenians.

As a result of this dialogue, in continuation of previous processes, on January 14, 2026, four Armenians—Gevorg Sujyan, Davit Davtyan, Vicken Euljekjian, and Vagif Khachatryan—were repatriated to Armenia.

Source: https://news.am/en/news/1036907