EX-KARABAKH COMMANDER ‘FACING EVICTION FROM ARMENIA’
By Astghik Bedevian

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Dec 12 2006

A prominent Lebanese-Armenian participant of the Nagorno-Karabakh
war who has campaigned against major concessions to Azerbaijan was
reportedly facing deportation from Armenia late Monday after being
arrested for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government.

Zhirayr Sefilian, who leads a hardline pressure group that considers
the Armenian government’s Karabakh policy "defeatist," and a large
group of his supporters were detained by law-enforcement bodies late
Saturday and early Sunday. All but one of the three dozen men making
up the newly formed Armenian Volunteer League (HKH) were released
shortly afterwards, following searches conducted in their apartments
by officers of the National Security Service (NSS).

The NSS said it has "irrefutable evidence" to assert that Sefilian set
up the group for mounting an armed uprising against the government
during next spring’s parliamentary elections. A written statement
released by the Armenian successor to the Soviet KGB said he also
sought to prod the country’s mainstream opposition into staging
violent anti-government protests.

The NSS also claimed that Sefilian and the other man held in custody,
opposition activist Vartan Malkhasian, presented HKH members with
a "plan of concrete actions" aimed at toppling President Robert
Kocharian during a December 2 confidential meeting in Yerevan. It was
conducting a criminal investigation under an article of the Armenian
Criminal Code dealing with public calls for a "violent change of
constitutional order."

Sefilian’s friends and associates told RFE/RL that the Lebanese
national, who commanded a battalion during the war with Azerbaijan
and has the lieutenant-colonel’s rank, will likely avoid trial and
be deported from Armenia. They expected him to be forcibly put on
a late-night flight to Aleppo, Syria. The NSS, spokesman, Artsvi
Baghramian, declined to confirm or deny this.

Meanwhile, leaders of a dozen opposition parties gathered for an
emergency meeting to condemn the decorated war veteran’s arrest. "The
authorities have committed yet another blunder," said Smbat Ayvazian
of the radical Hanrapetutyun party. "They want to create a society
of fear but they will get a society of hatred directed at themselves."

Aram Karapetian, the leader of the Nor Zhamanakner party, accused
the authorities of trying to forestall street protests against fresh
vote rigging and unpopular concessions to Azerbaijan such as the
return of Armenian-occupied lands surrounding Karabakh. He admitted
that Sefilian, a vocal opponent of any Armenian troop withdrawal,
was prepared for "radical actions."