YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—An Armenian law-enforcement agency brought additional criminal charges against a former commander of Nagorno-Karabakh’s army on Thursday hours after a court in Yerevan allowed his pre-trial arrest.
Lieutenant-General Mikael Arzumanyan was detained and charged with criminal negligence immediately after entering Armenia from Karabakh earlier this week.
The Investigative Committee initially indicted Arzumanyan over the capture by Azerbaijani forces of the Karabakh town of Shushi which happened at the end of the 2020 war. It claims that he failed to deploy more troops around Shushi beforehand.
Arzumanyan was appointed as commander of Karabakh’s Armenian-backed Defense Army on October 27, 2020 less than two weeks before the fall of the strategic town.
The Investigative Committee said on Thursday that the 49-year-old general also ordered Karabakh Armenian forces to withdraw from “strategically important” positions retaken by them days after the war broke out on September 27, 2020. It said that the order amounted to abuse of power.
Arzumanyan’s lawyer, Yerem Sargsyan, did not return phone calls throughout the day. He reportedly said on Wednesday that his client rejects the first accusation leveled against him.
Armenian opposition leaders have criticized Arzumanyan’s arrest, saying that it is part of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s efforts to deflect blame for the disastrous war. They continue to hold Pashinyan primarily responsible for Armenia’s defeat.
Movses Hakobyan, Armenia’s former top general, also denounced the criminal case against Arzumanyan. He implied that it is aimed at lending credence to Pashinyan’s “political statements” on the outcome of the war.
“Accusing Arzumanyan is not honest, to say the least, because he took over the army at a time when everything was already predetermined,” Hakobyan told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Secondly, nobody can judge whether a commander made a right or wrong decision in a particular situation.”
“Although I used to be Arzumanyan’s superior, I wouldn’t reserve myself the right to say whether he made the right or wrong decision at that point because there are lots of factors that influenced it,” added the Karabakh-born general.
Arzumanyan was dismissed as Karabakh army commander last year. He has worked as an advisor to Arayik Harutyunyan, the Karabakh president, since then. A spokeswoman for Harutyunyan on Tuesday described Arzumanyan as “one of our best military commanders.”
