The suspects include Albert Bazeyan, a once prominent politician who had served as mayor of Yerevan over two decades ago and challenged then President Robert Kocharian in the following years. The others are members of an obscure militant group called Khachakirner (Crusaders).
The NSS gave no details of the alleged coup plot when it reported the arrests over the weekend. It said it searched the group’s offices and confiscated weapons, ammunition as well as electronic jamming devices kept there.
Bazeyan’s Yerevan apartment was also raided by NSS officers. But it is not clear whether any weapons were found there.
Bazeyan’s lawyer, Georgi Melikian, rejected the accusations as “fabricated” and “illegal,” arguing that his client personally knows only one of the other detained suspects.
“Bazeyan regards this as political persecution,” Melikian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday.
A well-known veteran of the 1991-1994 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Bazeyan retired from active politics in the late 2000s. The 67-year-old returned to the limelight earlier this year, criticizing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in regular interviews with some pro-opposition media outlets.
Neither Bazeyan nor Khachakirner were involved in ongoing anti-government protests in Yerevan that broke out last week following the latest Azerbaijani offensive in Karabakh.
Incidentally, the Khachakirner leader, Sargis Poghosian, is not among the arrested men. He could not be reached for comment.