Major Narek Yeremian was among three dozen Armenian soldiers taken prisoner during the November 16 fighting on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border which left at least 13 troops from both sides dead. The Armenian military also lost two border posts in what Yerevan condemned as an Azerbaijani incursion into Armenian territory.
Baku freed ten POWs on December 4. A few days later, Armenia’s Investigative Committee arrested four of them on charges of violating “rules for performing military service.”
The law-enforcement body said they tried to negotiate with, rather than engage, Azerbaijani troops that attacked and seized their border post. It filed the same accusation carrying between three and seven years in prison against Yeremian.
A court of first instance refused to sanction the officer’s arrest, however. The Court of Appeals overturned that decision late on Monday.
Yeremian’s lawyer, Karmen Poghosian, said on Tuesday that he only partly accepts the accusations and maintains that he and his subordinates “didn’t have enough time to destroy the enemy that intruded the position.”
“They didn’t leave their position, flee and surrender,” Poghosian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
A lawyer representing another arrested soldier said on December 14 that he and his comrades repeatedly warned their senior commanders about an Azerbaijani military buildup in the border area but were ordered not to open fire.
Armenian opposition politicians have for months accused the government of not allowing army units to shoot at Azerbaijani forces attacking them at various sections of the border. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian insisted on November 17 that neither he nor any other official had ever issued no-shoot orders.
Baku set free on December 19 ten other Armenian soldiers captured on November 16. None of them is known to have been indicted so far.