Thursday,
Four Killed In Yerevan Shootout
Armenia - Law-enforcement officers at the scene of deadly shootings in the
Kanaker district of Yerevan, .
Four men, including a reputed crime figure, were killed and four others wounded
in a shootout that erupted in Yerevan early on Thursday.
The Armenian police said it occurred in the courtyard of a house in the city’s
northern Kanaker suburb. Police officers found two assault rifles and four
pistols at the scene.
The Investigative Committee said later in the day that four people have been
arrested in connection with what was one of the deadliest shootings in Armenia’s
recent history. The law-enforcement agency did not identify them or comment on
possible causes of the bloodshed.
Armenian media reports said the victims included Artur Ghazarian, a 42-year-old
underworld figure nicknamed “Tuy,” and Artyush Simonian, a former parliament
deputy and business executive.
Both men lived in Kanaker. Armlur.am reported that Simonian, 61, returned to
Armenia from the Netherlands on Monday.
The publication also said investigators believe that the overnight killings were
either the result of a bitter dispute between two groups of men gathered in the
Kanaker house or an armed attack carried out by a third party.
Opposition Vice-Mayor Rearrested
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia - Menua Hovsepian, a deputy mayor of Goris.
Armenia’s Court of Appeals allowed investigators on Thursday to again arrest an
opposition-linked deputy mayor of the southeastern town of Goris one month after
he was set free on bail.
The official, Menua Hovsepian, was first taken into custody on August 17
following the arrest of Goris Mayor Arush Arushanian. The two men affiliated
with the main opposition Hayastan alliance are facing criminal charges which
they both reject as politically motivated.
Arushanian remains behind bars despite his and his political allies’ landslide
victory in a municipal election held in Goris on October 17. The election
outcome is widely regarded as a serious setback for Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian and his Civil Contract party.
A local court granted Hovsepian bail and ordered his release three days before
the vote. The Court of Appeals overturned that ruling in what the vice-mayor’s
lawyer, Armen Melkonian, denounced as a “political decision” aimed at
intimidating other opposition members.
Melkonian argued that his client posted bail worth 30 million drams ($63,000)
and did not obstruct the investigation into the high-profile case after his
release.
“Thirty million drams is not 30 cents; it’s a serious guarantee that a person
won’t do anything wrong,” Melkonian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Hovsepian is accused of misusing public funds and coercing local residents to
campaign for Hayastan in the run-up to the June 20 parliamentary elections. His
lawyer insisted that the charges are baseless.
Goris and surrounding villages make up a major community of Armenia’s Syunik
province bordering districts southwest of Nagorno-Karabakh that were retaken by
Azerbaijan during and shortly after last year’s war. The mayors of virtually all
provincial towns and villages blamed Pashinian for Armenia’s defeat in the war
and demanded his resignation.
Some of them, including Arushanian, encouraged supporters to disrupt Pashinian’s
visits to the region. Four Syunik mayors were arrested shortly after the June
elections. One of them was freed late last month.
Armenian, Azeri FMs Meet Again
Foreign Ministers Ararat Mirzoyan (left) of Armenia and Jeyhun Bayramov of
Azerbaijan.
The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met late on Wednesday for the
third time in less than two months for talks hosted by their French counterpart
Jean-Yves Le Drian.
Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov also met with Le Drian as well as the U.S.,
Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group separately before their
face-to-face talks held in Paris.
Le Drian tweeted afterwards that he brought them together to “help reduce
tensions” between Armenia and Azerbaijan one year after a Russian-brokered
ceasefire stopped the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“France remains fully engaged in in the Minsk Group,” he said. “We do not forget
the victims of the war interrupted a year ago.”
The first meeting of Mirzoyan and Bayramov took place in New York on September
24 in the presence of the group’s co-chairs. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov organized and presided over their second encounter in Minsk on October 14.
The French Foreign Ministry said Le Drian sought to “keep up the momentum” in
Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations.
“In these various exchanges, the Minister reiterated France's desire to
contribute to the strengthening of dialogue between the parties,” a ministry
spokesperson said in a statement.
According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry, during his meetings in Paris
Mirzoyan stuck to the official Armenian line that the Karabakh conflict remains
unresolved and requires a “comprehensive” settlement based on the mediators’
peace proposals. He also condemned the recent killings by Azerbaijani forces of
two Karabakh Armenian civilians and Baku’s reluctance to free dozens of Armenian
prisoners.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said, for its part, that Bayramov discussed
with the Armenian foreign minister and the mediators ways of normalizing
Azerbaijan’s relations with Armenia given the “new realities in the region.”
The co-chairs issued no joint statement on the Paris talks as of Thursday
afternoon. In their last statement released on October 8, they reiterated their
“willingness to visit the region in the near future to discuss next steps in the
process.”
The visit has still not taken place. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian suggested
over the weekend that it is delayed by Azerbaijan, which claims to have ended
the conflict with its victory in last year’s war.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that the mediators should be able
to resume their visits to Karabakh as part of their peace efforts.
Armenians Barred From Azeri-Controlled Road
• Nane Sahakian
• Artak Khulian
• Anush Mkrtchian
An Azerbaijani checkpoint set up at on the main road conneting Armeia to Iran,
September 14, 2021.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian faced fresh opposition allegations of a sellout
on Thursday after Azerbaijan expanded border controls at a section of the main
highway connecting Armenia to Iran, effectively making it off limits to Armenian
vehicles.
The 21-kilometer section is part of contested border areas along Armenia’s
Syunik province which were controversially handed over to Azerbaijan following
last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijani forces set up a checkpoint there on September 12 to tax Iranian
commercial trucks transporting cargo to and from Armenia. The move caused
serious disruptions in Armenian-Iranian trade operations and raised tensions in
Baku’s relations with Tehran.
Pashinian assured lawmakers on September 15 that the passport and customs checks
will not apply to Armenian nationals in line with Armenian-Azerbaijani
understandings reached last December.
Opening a weekly session of his cabinet on Thursday, Pashinian announced that
Baku “unofficially” notified Yerevan on Wednesday that starting from midnight it
will extend the border controls to Armenian vehicles. He said the Armenian
government therefore decided to “redirect” Armenian travellers to an alternative
road connecting Syunik’s administrative center Kapan to another provincial town,
Goris, and bypassing the border area.
The 70-kilometer bypass road has been mostly rebuilt in recent months. Pashinian
acknowledged that it is still not convenient enough for heavy trucks and needs
further upgrades.
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian speaks during a cabinet meeting in
Yerevan, .
Meanwhile, Armenian border guards deployed in Syunik banned trucks and cars with
Armenian license plates from entering the Azerbaijani-controlled section of the
old Goris-Kapan highway. An RFE/RL crew was also not allowed to drive along it
and film the mountainous area.
The shutdown created serious logistical problems for several Armenian villages
situated along the highway. They can now communicate with the rest of Syunik
only through dirt roads that are impassable for ordinary cars. Pashinian said in
this regard that “no village will be cut off” from other Armenian-controlled
territory.
The prime minister suggested that Baku imposed the border checks because of
Yerevan’s refusal to agree to a special transport corridor that would connect
Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave via the portion of Syunik bordering Iran.
As he spoke hundreds of protesters led by several opposition parliamentarians
clashed with riot police outside the main government building in Yerevan. The
police detained dozens of protesters after refusing to let the lawmakers enter
the building to demand further explanations from Pashinian.
One of them, Anna Grigorian, accused the government of ceding the Kapan-Goris
road section to Azerbaijan “without any legal basis.” Gegham Manukian, another
lawmaker representing the main opposition Hayastan alliance, suggested that the
Azerbaijani border checks were the result of a secret deal with Pashinian.
Armenia - Riot police detain an opposition protester outside the main government
building in Yerevan, .
In a statement, the alliance headed by former President Robert Kocharian charged
that Pashinian’s administration allowed Baku to set up the checkpoints in
“Armenia’s sovereign territory.” It reaffirmed its pledges to topple the
government with a “nationwide resistance” campaign launched earlier this week.
“As long as this regime remains in power such disgraceful concessions can be
expected every day,” said Hayastan. “The individual holding the post of prime
minister does not decide anything anymore. It is Azerbaijan that makes decisions
in his place.”
Pashinian insisted during the cabinet meeting that “the Azerbaijani checkpoint
is not located on Armenian territory.”
Armenia - Riot police clash with opposition protesters outside the main
government building in Yerevan, .
Syunik borders the Zangelan and Kubatli districts southwest of Karabakh which
were mostly recaptured by Azerbaijan during the six-week war stopped by a
Russian-brokered ceasefire last November. Pashinian ordered Armenian army units
and local militias in December to withdraw from the rest of those districts as
well as territory located along the Soviet-era Armenian-Azerbaijani border,
which has never been demarcated due to the Karabakh conflict.
The troop withdrawal sparked angry protests from local government officials and
ordinary residents of Syunik. Opposition leaders in Yerevan likewise accused
Pashinian of hastily and illegally ceding those lands to Baku.
Pashinian said late last month that the withdrawal prevented an Azerbaijani
attack on Syunik. Hayastan responded by demanding that prosecutors launch
criminal proceedings against the prime minister.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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