Residents of Armenia sentenced in Baku on espionage case

David Davtyan and Gevorg Sudjyan were sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment. The defendants pleaded guilty only to illegal crossing of the border of Azerbaijan. Gevorg Sudjyan claimed that he visited Nagorno-Karabakh for humanitarian purposes.

The citizens of Armenia were accused of illegal possession of weapons, espionage, participation in an illegal armed formation, and illegal border crossing, the “Trend” reports.

According to the prosecutors’ version, in 2019, David Davtyan and Gevorg Sudjyan began cooperating with the Armenian secret services. In September 2020, they allegedly entered Azerbaijan, joined an illegal armed formation (IAF), and bought weapons and ammunition. David Davtyan and Gevorg Sudjyan collected the information about the positions of the Azerbaijani army in the territories where battles were taking place, about the number of military personnel, and other data, which they then passed on to the Armenian secret services. On November 11, 2020, the suspects were detained by the Azerbaijani armed forces.

The office of the Ombudsman of Armenia reported that Gevorg Sudjyan, the head of the charitable public organization “New Armenia Motherland-Diaspora”, and his friend David were captured. During the war, Gevorg Sudjyan provided humanitarian assistance to the population of Karabakh, and after the end of the combat actions, he decided to familiarize himself with the situation on the spot.

David Davtyan and Gevorg Sudjyan pleaded partially guilty to the charge of illegally crossing the state border of Azerbaijan.