Arman Mkrtumian, the former powerful head of Armenia’s highest criminal court, was shot and lightly wounded late on Tuesday in a reported armed attack on his house carried out by gunmen.
Police said Mkrtumian’s 30-year-old son fired a gas pistol at the three masked attackers armed with assault rifles when they burst into the villa located in Dzoraghbyur, a village just outside Yerevan. One of the gunmen was wounded and caught by the Mkrtumians while the two others fled the scene, firing random gunshots in the process, according to a police statement.
The police also released a short video showing the alleged attacker who was identified as Hovannes Ryzhenko, a 45-year-old resident of Gyumri. The man had blood on his face and a bandage wrapped around his head.
“The neutralized person was detained,” Sona Truzian, a spokeswoman for Armenia’s Investigative Committee, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service on Wednesday. She said law-enforcement authorities are taking “all necessary measures” to track down the other attackers.
The authorities did not immediately suggest any motives behind the gun attack. The Investigative Committee opened a criminal inquiry under an article of the Armenian Criminal Code dealing with “banditry.”
Mkrtumian received medical treatment at Yerevan’s Erebuni hospital shortly after incident. A hospital official said he refused hospitalization despite sustaining a gunshot wound. The retired judge made no public statements on the attack.
Mkrtumian, 57, headed Armenia’s Court of Cassation for ten years. He resigned in early June more than one month after mass protests brought down the country’s previous government headed by Serzh Sarkisian.
Throughout his tenure Mkrtumian was accused by lawyers of severely limiting the independence of lower courts. In June 2013, for example, about 200 lawyers went on a two-day strike to protest against what they called arbitrary decisions routinely made by the Court of Cassation.