In Armenia, court arrests ex-deputy chief of General Staff Khachatryan for two months

Armenian National Hero, Lieutenant General and former Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Tiran Khachatryan was arrested for two months. This was announced by his lawyers Varazdat Harutyunyan and Armen Andrikyan on January 5.

"After Judge Masis Melkonyan did not provide enough time to familiarize himself with the 1200-page case, ignoring the lack of reasonable doubt and grounds for arrest, granted the investigator's petition and arrested Lieutenant General Tiran Khachatryan for two months," Harutyunyan wrote on his Facebook page (owned by the recognized extremist company Meta, its activities are banned in Russia).

According to the lawyer, there are no grounds for detention, the case is approaching the statute of limitations, and Khachatryan does not face imprisonment under the presented charges. Harutyunyan emphasized that the arrest was applied "not to ensure the progress of the proceedings, but to punish him for his active political and civil position."

In February 2021, Khachatryan was dismissed from the post of First Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces. According to media reports, Khachatryan's dismissal was due to the fact that he mocked Pashinyan's words, who said Iskander missiles were "unexploded" or "exploded by 10%."

Before that, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that Iskander missiles allegedly "failed to explode" or exploded only 10% during the escalation of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The next escalation of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in late September 2020 and ended on November 10, 2020 after the signing of a trilateral agreement on the cessation of hostilities in the republic. The document, among other things, envisages the introduction of Russian peacekeepers into the region, exchange of prisoners between the parties to the conflict, the transfer of some districts of the region by Armenia to Azerbaijan and the return of refugees to Karabakh.