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The statement of Vagif Khachatryan, an Artsakh civilian standing trial on fabricated charges in Azerbaijan, has been misinterpreted in a Baku court, Ambassadors-at-Large Edmon Marukyan says.

The 68-year-old man was abducted and arrested by Azerbaijani border guards at the Lachin Corridor checkpoint on 29 July while being evacuated to Armenia by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for an urgent heart surgery.

Khachatryan is being tried on trumped-up charges of "genocide" in the village of Meshali on 22 December 1991. He has denied all charges against him and claimed that witness statements had been falsified.

“As I stated earlier all ongoing proceedings in Azerbaijan, including the trial of Vagif Khachatryan, are from a genre of farce and a mockery of the European Convention on Human Rights and a violation of all universally accepted international norms in the context of all obligations undertaken by Azerbaijan,” the envoy wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.

“Today, 70-year-old Vagif Khachatryan again denied his participation in the events of Meshali and apologized in Armenian, literally saying that he was not there: "I wasn't there, I apologize to everyone, I wasn't there" said Khachatryan.

“However, the translator conveyed that Khachatryan is apologizing to the Azerbaijani people for all the incidents committed by Armenians, misinterpreting Vagif's words. It is obvious that no fair trial can be conducted under the Azerbaijani regime, therefore they have to immediately release all prisoners from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh,” Marukyan stressed.