Armenia

What has happened

The European Court of Human Rights has found that Armenian police tortured a man in custody, and that Armenia then failed to investigate it properly. The United Nations Committee against Torture reported in April 2025 that the conduct has not stopped, describing continuing allegations of police violence to extract confessions and of force used against demonstrators that left lasting injuries. The same Committee recorded reports that Armenian military forces killed, tortured and ill-treated Azerbaijani prisoners of war and other protected persons, and that no one has been charged.

A finding of torture by Armenian police

In Virabyan v. Armenia, decided on 2 October 2012, the European Court found a violation of article 3 of the European Convention in its most serious form. The Court’s own record of the judgment classifies the finding as torture, not as inhuman or degrading treatment, and it made a second finding that the investigation which followed was ineffective.

The case has not been closed by time. Armenia remains under the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for the execution of judgments in this group of cases, which concern ill-treatment in police custody and the failure to investigate it.

Azerbaijani prisoners of war and protected persons

This is the gravest part of the record, and the Committee against Torture set it out in its concluding observations on Armenia of 29 April 2025. The Committee wrote that it was concerned by reports of

“grave violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law committed by Armenian military forces against prisoners of war and other protected persons of Azerbaijani ethnic or national origin, including extrajudicial killings, torture and other ill-treatment, and the recording and dissemination of videos that appear to depict the desecration and mutilation of corpses.”

Armenia told the Committee that six criminal investigations had been opened. The Committee recorded that no criminal charges have been filed, because the identities of those responsible have not been confirmed. It asked Armenia to condemn the violations at the highest level, to investigate them properly, and to reach any commander who knew or should have known that those under his command had committed or were likely to commit killings, torture or ill-treatment, and did nothing to prevent it.

The Committee also said something that matters beyond Armenia. It recalled that the prohibition of torture is non-derogable, that no state of war or threat of war can ever justify it, and that

“the obligations stemming from this prohibition are not subject to reciprocity.”

In a conflict where each government points at the conduct of the other, that sentence removes the usual defence. What the other side did is not an answer.

What the Committee found continuing in 2025

The Committee recorded allegations that police had punched, kicked and slapped detainees, and in at least one case used an electric discharge weapon, in order to extract information or obtain confessions. It recorded excessive force against demonstrators in September 2023 and in May and June 2024, including beatings by police and stun grenades fired directly into crowds, leaving a large number of serious and in some cases lifelong injuries. It noted that more than seventeen years after the demonstrations of 2008, no convictions have been handed down.

On detention, the Committee singled out Nubarashen Prison, where cells were said to be in an advanced state of dilapidation. Armenia replied that it intends to close the prison, so renovating it would be pointless. The Committee answered that the continued detention of people in unsuitable facilities may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Displacement of Azerbaijani families

In Chiragov and Others v. Armenia, decided by the Grand Chamber on 16 June 2015, Azerbaijani applicants displaced from the Lachin district won findings that Armenia had violated their right to property, their right to respect for their homes and family life, and their right to an effective remedy.

The Coalition records the limit of that judgment as carefully as the judgment itself. The Court made no finding under article 3 in that case. It is authority about losing a home and having no way to get it back. It is not authority that the applicants were ill-treated.

What runs the other way

Armenia’s own law against sending people to torture is strong and, on its face, absolute. Article 55(1) of the Constitution provides that no one may be expelled or extradited to a foreign state if there is a real danger that the person may be subjected to the death penalty, torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It carries no exception for serious crime and none for national security.

Armenia acceded to the Convention against Torture on 13 September 1993 and to its Optional Protocol on 14 September 2006, and it has entered no reservation to either. Reports supplied to the Coalition describe Armenian authorities stopping removals to Russia and Belarus by applying that prohibition, in at least two instances after refusing the person refugee status, which is the distinction this site exists to explain. Those accounts have not yet been verified against their primary sources and are therefore not stated here as findings.

One gap runs against Armenia even so. It has never made the declaration under article 22 of the Convention, so no individual can bring a complaint against Armenia to the Committee against Torture. In April 2025 the Committee encouraged Armenia to consider making it.

What is not established

No court or treaty body has been shown to have found that Armenia returned a person to torture. The Coalition has found no case of Armenia removing anyone who held an operative protection against return.

Nothing here establishes that Azerbaijani civilians living in or travelling to Armenia face torture. The findings above concern prisoners of war and protected persons in armed conflict, and they are recorded by the Committee as reports it received, not as facts it determined for itself.

Armenia is not a destination for removals from the United States. It holds no arrangement of that kind and appears in the Coalition’s register only as a country a person was protected against, never as a country people were sent to.