By Mark Dovich
Luis Moreno Ocampo, the first chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, has urged Azerbaijan to release Armenians in its custody ahead of this year’s global climate summit, which the country will host later this year.
“It is crucial that at this conference, the issue of the Armenian hostages in Baku prisons cannot be ignored,” Moreno Ocampo told reporters Friday at a press conference in Yerevan, part of a landmark trip to Armenia.
Moreno Ocampo’s agenda included meetings with Armenians forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh and with the region’s exiled leadership, as well as visits to frontline villages.
During his trip, Moreno Ocampo repeatedly reiterated his conviction that Azerbaijan’s blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh and subsequent expulsion of nearly all of the region’s Armenians last year should be considered an act of genocide.
Read more: Karabakh blockade is genocide, says ex-ICC prosecutor
“Genocide happens when someone attacks an ethnic group with the intent to destroy it. And destroying it may mean removal. Genocide does not require killing,” Moreno Ocampo explained. “Just creating the conditions is enough. And the blockade of the Lachin corridor produced exactly this type of genocide.”
To that end, Moreno Ocampo welcomed Armenia’s watershed move to join the ICC earlier this year, calling it “a new protection system” for the country, even while acknowledging the limits of what the Hague-based tribunal can do.
Read more: Armenia votes to join ICC, defying warnings from Russia
Moreno Ocampo noted that judges at the ICC set a significant precedent in 2019, when they launched an investigation into the mass flight of members of the Rohingya minority from Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh. In effect, the tribunal had broadened its reach, declaring jurisdiction in cases where even just a part of the alleged crime took place in a member state. Bangladesh is a party to the ICC, while Myanmar is not.
A potential ICC case against Azerbaijan’s leaders “is something that the Artsakhians have to build, have to connect, and there are ways to do it,” Moreno Ocampo asserted. “The right to return is clear. How to achieve it is a different matter.”
Gassia Apkarian, a California judge who spoke alongside Moreno Ocampo at Friday’s press conference, echoed the former prosecutor’s views on the ICC.
“Is our joining the ICC going to stop (Azerbaijani President Ilham) Aliyev from committing crimes? Perhaps not. But it makes them think, because we are now a part of a larger system, where we can take steps to seek the punishment of those who commit atrocities,” said Apkarian, who also serves as an advisor to the Center for Truth and Justice, a U.S.-based Armenian victims group.
“The ICC is not a big, actual weapon. But it’s a legal tool,” Apkarian added.
And it is a tool that CFTJ is ready to use. Earlier this year, the nonprofit submitted a first-of-its-kind petition formally asking the tribunal to investigate Azerbaijan’s leaders for genocide. That submission refers not to the country’s actions in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, but rather to its military incursions into Armenia and ongoing occupation of a number of border areas since the 2020 war.
Read more: U.S. nonprofit asks ICC to investigate Azerbaijan for genocide
The ICC has so far not indicated publicly if it plans to open a preliminary examination of the evidence CFTJ has provided, the first step to a full investigation, which can stretch on for years and does not guarantee a prosecution would ever be opened.
In the meantime, Moreno Ocampo pledged his continued support for Armenia, saying, “It’s not the time to give up, and you are not alone.”
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