Lieutenant-General Mikael Arzumanian was detained and charged with criminal negligence immediately after entering Armenia from Karabakh earlier this week.
The Investigative Committee initially indicted Arzumanian over the capture by Azerbaijani forces of the Karabakh town of Shushi (Shusha) which happened at the end of the 2020 war. It claims that he failed to deploy more troops around Shushi beforehand.
Arzumanian 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.
Arzumanian’s lawyer, Yerem Sargsian, 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 Arzumanian’s arrest, saying that it is part of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s efforts to deflect blame for the disastrous war. They continue to hold Pashinian primarily responsible for Armenia’s defeat.
Movses Hakobian, Armenia’s former top general, also denounced the criminal case against Arzumanian. He implied that it is aimed at lending credence to Pashinian’s “political statements” on the outcome of the war.
“Accusing Arzumanian is not honest, to say the least, because he took over the army at a time when everything was already predetermined,” Hakobian 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 Arzumanian’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.
Arzumanian was dismissed as Karabakh army commander last year. He has worked as an advisor to Arayik Harutiunian, the Karabakh president, since then. A spokeswoman for Harutiunian on Tuesday described Arzumanian as “one of our best military commanders.”