Vardanyan`s lawyer: Freedom for Armenian POWS must come before any  peace deal

ArmInfo. A deal for the release of prisoners must be a precondition to a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan to receive the final support of the American  administration. This was stated by the lawyer of the Vardanyan  family, international human rights lawyer from Washington Jared  Genser to the CNA (Catholic News Agency).

"We have been told that their freedom needs to be a precondition for  President Trump to  ultimately bless  a peace deal.  This is really  important development because our biggest fear all along has been  that if peace deal were to proceed, and there was no resolution of  Nagorno-karabagh or of the Armenian Christian POWS, then  unfortunately, it could lead to a  sacrificing of those prisoners as  a part of the peace deal," he noted, recalling Trump's pre-election  promise to help return the Armenian prisoners. The lawyer noted that  peace will be impossible until "all the problems are identified,  agreed upon and fully resolved within the framework of a peace  treaty." According to him, "the release of prisoners is a top  priority for the American authorities," and Trump can do a lot to  achieve this.

"A peace deal  that leaves unresolved what the future is going to  look like for the people of Nagorno- Karabakh and the release of  Armenian Christian POWS is a recipe for future flare-ups,  disagreements and even potential war," Genser is sure.

The lawyer also pointed out that Vardanyan,  a Christian belonging to  the Armenian Apostolic Church, has been denied access to a Bible,  which he said " has only reinforced that persecution of him and other  leaders from Nagorno-Karabakh is not exclusively because they were an  alleged "breakway republic" but relates to the fact that he's a  Christian."

Against this background, Genser mentioned the destruction of Armenian  churches and other Armenian heritage sites after the ethnic cleansing  in Nagorno-Karabakh. He declined to say what specific methods should  be employed to apply pressure on Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev  for the POWS, though he encouraged the Trump administration to  "shock" Azerbaijani president, whom he described as a dictator.   "Dictators only release political prisoners only when they have to.  They never do it because they want to or because they are magnanimous  or humanitarian by orientation. The only way that happens is when the  dictator sees the cost of detaining the political prisoner or  political prisoners as being dramatically higher than the benefits of  detaining them," the lawyer emphasized.