Armenia’s Investigative Committee on Thursday filed criminal charges against five of the 10 Armenian prisoners of war who were captured during the November 16 attempt by Azerbaijan to invade Armenia and were released on Saturday.
The five soldiers have been charged with violating the rules for on-duty combat service that resulted in severe consequences, the Investigative Committee spokesperson Vardan Tadevosian told News.am.
The spokesperson also informed that the Investigative Committee is currently considering the motions for arrest, and the court hearings are in progress.
On December 4, through Russia’s mediation, Azerbaijan transferred to Armenia 10 Armenian soldiers who were captured during the fighting on Armenia’s southeastern border on November 16, two days after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan fired defense minister Artak Gabrielyan following another botched attempt by Azerbaijan to invade Armenia.
The soldiers were transferred to Yerevan via a plane by former commander of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Artsakh, Deputy Commander of the Southern Military Okrug of the Russian Armed Forces, General Rustam Muradov.
On November 23, during an online press conference, Pashinyan announced that there would be criminal cases launched, stressing the need to clarify the circumstances of the capture of each soldier.
Pashinyan was criticized for publicly criticizing the capabilities of Armenia’s combat soldiers. Around the same time, Armenia’s Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan was caught on tape criticizing Armenian soldiers during a gathering with Armenian community representatives in Paris.
Pity our soldiers did not take down 1000 or more of the enemies
Dereliction of duty can happen in any army. The only was to stop it is to have a military where there are consequences for not following orders.
So what is it that they did that warrants for their arrest. Did get involved in espionage? Did they cause harm to other Armenian soldiers?
How come there are always Armenian POWs after each scrimmage but no Azeri? What’s going on?
Because we have an inexperienced incompetent defeatist former journalist disguised as a leader who had ordered the Armenian soldiers not to engage the enemy in order to avoid the escalation of hostilities. How pathetic! It is as if he does not know what kind of enemy he is dealing with. These filthy despicable Azerbaranis are opportunist hyenas who will take advantage of any situation to do harm to our people any which way they can and here we are helping them do exactly that by our inaction and passive approach to their aggression.
If some of these Armenian soldiers were taken hostage as a direct consequence of following orders from the top leadership then why is it that they are facing criminal charges now? That’s like being stabbed in the back twice. Once for not having the authority to fight and defend themselves and being taken hostage as a result, and most likely tortured by the sadistic enemy, and twice for having to face charges for following orders that put them in this predicament in the first place.
Nothing this dysfunctional government does makes any sense anymore. These soldiers have taken an oath to defend the homeland against all enemies according to the Armenian constitution and with complete disregard for the rule of law their leader orders them not to engage and attack to repel the enemy that is encroaching on and making intrusions into Armenian territory. This is insanity! Where are the charges filed against him for the pathetic way he conducted last year’s disastrous war that caused so many deaths and so much damage to the nation?
The enemy is taking advantage of our weak leader who has no business running a country, let alone one that has been in a state of war for the last thirty years. The current leader of the country is the face of defeat and I’m convinced if he had done the right thing and resigned and was replaced by a TRUE patriot the enemy would think twice before making such moves and with massive consequences. You never give the Turkish enemy even a slight chance to conduct himself the way he does under any circumstances. You force your will on him and annihilate him!
Thats what i been thinking all along . Maybe they the “moogrims” are better trained? now! Or thats what they concentrate on so they use them as bargaining platform further on. Plus our casualties seems has increased now then theirs.
This idiot Pashinian shouldnt have given the 12 miles stretch of the highway. Should have stood his ground. From the comunizme era both AM & AZ & RU signed that: That stretch of the highway ONLY from the eastern side starts the AZ and the western side finishes Armenia. How the hell he gives them both sides of the highway to AZ. He should go back and study geography. Now they can almost walk to Nakhichevan or if there is any resistance maybe a day or 2 then they will walk into Armenia square. Bloody hell: He even commented when the AZ started stopping Iranien trucks thats a small issue. What an idiot he is, or he expects the Armenians of the world they are uneducated like him to believe him.
Ararat, you continually blame everything on Pashinyan. It’s pathetic and it’s the easy way out. The real problem is 30 years of ineptitude, corruption, misappropriation of military funds by military leadership, and sitting idly by while our enemy purchased high tech weaponry and developed a modern army capable of defeating us easily. Come back down to earth and join the realities of the world. It doesn’t matter who was PM last November, the result would have been the same. To believe anything else is simply fantasy. What we should be doing in stead of pointing fingers is buying high tech weaponry, and turning our nation in to a garrison state like Israel.
Zaven
I have done no such thing. I have always said all the leaders have their own share of responsibility for the things you mentioned but he is the leader now and he can’t make excuses and blame others for all his failures. I even said the problems we are facing today stated from the day we defeated the enemy and declared victory in 1994 because even though we won the war we failed to bring the war to its intended conclusion. That is to force the enemy to agree to our terms and end it all instead of agreeing to a ceasefire which was a gift to the enemy to get back on its feet to fight another day. That’s not how you handle your terrorist Turkish enemies. When opportunity presents itself you annihilate them with no mercy because given the opportunity that is exactly what they will do to you.
Pashniyan signed up for the job but never delivered all the promises he made to the nation that got him elected in the first place. That’s assuming if the elections were legitimate. He said he was going to hold responsible all those who plundered the country and return every stolen cent back into the state’s treasury and he did no such thing. Instead he went after ordinary people who opposed his way of handling the country’s affairs while those whom you point your fingers at were roaming freely. He spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying useless weapons and fighter jets he never used or could use in the war. He could have spent those wasted millions on buying thousands of military UAVs (drones) and change the course of the war. He had no strategy for the war because he was not and is not the right leader for the task at hand. He retired all experienced and battle-hardened army generals from their positions and many of them who had fought in the Artsakh Liberation War thirty years ago and with many victories to their names and put inexperienced officers in their places who would not question his authority and were no threat to him. He should have mobilized the country ahead of the war and he did not. He could have stopped the war early on with far less casualties and loss of territory but he did not because he did not want to look bad! When he let the war go on he could have persevered for a little longer because as we found out the enemy had used up over three-quarters of its military arsenal and had very limited capability left at the time he capitulated. The winter was around the corner and that could further have hampered enemy activities and given us time to resupply and regroup and even conduct a counter offensive and perhaps change the outcome of the war.
Now, inviting you back down to earth, how is Pashinyan ordering the Armenian soldiers not to engage the encroaching enemy thirsty for Armenian blood and been taken hostage as a result and now being charged for following his pathetic defeatist orders have anything to do with the last thirty years? This is about his failed and disastrous policies which instead of pushing back the enemy are emboldening them to commit more crimes. He totally abandoned and left unprotected civilians in the border regions facing the enemy, while engaging in petty bickering with the opposition in the parliament, and because of his inaction and passive approach to the enemy intrusion into our territory over the course of several months created the dangerous situation and chaos in border regions that led to killings and hostage taking. If the Armenian soldiers had ignored his pathetic orders and had taken upon themselves to engage the enemy, fire back and repel them and taken enemy hostages in the process the country would not be in the situation it is in. He has failed our people time and again and he is the face of defeat and that’s exactly how he is being treated by the opportunist enemy.
Armenia needs a strong leader. Good luck.