Two senior Armenian military officials have been sacked following the capture of an Azerbaijani soldier who crossed into Armenia and attacked members of a local family.
One of them, Colonel Artsvik Grigorian, was a deputy commander of the Armenian army’s Special Corps mostly deployed in the Syunik province. Grigorian was relieved of his duties in a presidential decree initiated by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Syunik comprises the village of Shaki where the soldier, Nasimi Musayev, was apprehended on October 1. Sources told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that a local military police chief was also fired last week because of the border incident that had a huge public resonance in Armenia.
In an apparently related development, Pashinian sacked a deputy chief of Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS), Davit Sanamian, on October 5. Sanamian oversaw Armenian border guards that are also stationed in the area.
The sackings have clearly not placated the two opposition groups represented in the Armenian parliament. One of them, the Hayastan bloc, circulated on Monday a bill that would require the country’s defense minister and the heads of the NSS and other law-enforcement bodies to come to the National Assembly and give more details of the incident.
Aram Vartevanian, a deputy speaker of the parliament representing the opposition Strong Armenia alliance, backed the initiative. He said the top security officials could speak behind the closed doors if necessary.
According to Azerbaijani authorities, Musayev deserted his military unit deployed on the Armenian border on September 26. The NSS claimed to have been notified by them about his disappearance on September 29.
Opposition leaders have decried the NSS’s and other security agencies’ failure to issue security alerts to residents of Shaki and other local communities. They have portrayed the incident as a serious security breach highlighting what they call Pashinian’s continuing failure to secure the border with Azerbaijan. They have also warned him against handing over the Azerbaijani serviceman to Baku.
Musayev is facing multiple criminal charges, including an armed assault on Shaki resident Ani Avetisian. He shot and seriously wounded the 39-year-old woman when she tried to pull his assault rifle away from two of her children reportedly held by him at gunpoint. A wounded Avetisian managed to stab him with a kitchen knife before he fled her house.
Pashinian effectively blamed Avetisian for the gunfire last week, saying that she should have waited for police to arrive at the scene instead of taking on the armed soldier. The remarks added to the opposition anger with his response to the incident.