All Hostages Released from Seized Yerevan Police Station (Updated)

2:30 pm Varuzhan Avetisyan, one of the leaders of "Daredevils of Sasun," informed the media that the remaining two hostages, deputy chief of national police Vardan Yeghiazarya and deputy head of Yerevan’s police Valery Osipyan, have also been freed.

12:30 pm Vitaly Balasanyan, a lawmaker of Nagorno-Karabakh’s parliament who has been acting as a mediator between the gunmen occupying a police station in Yerevan and the law enforcement authorities, told reporters Saturday morning that the armed group has freed 2 of the four hostages inside the seized Erebuni building. 

The two remaining hostages are deputy chief of national police Vardan Yeghiazarya and deputy head of Yerevan’s police Valery Osipyan, and, according to Balasanyan, the gunmen have agreed to release them on condition that a media center is established in a neutral zone where media representatives will be able to communicate with the members of the armed group. This request, the MP said, is expected to be fulfilled within the next hours.

The siege of the Erebuni police station began on July 17 as a group of armed men calling themselves the “Daredevils of Sasun” stormed the building, killing a police colonel in the process, wounding several others and taking the remaining personnel hostage. The initial demand of the gunmen affiliated with radical anti-government movement Founding Parliament was the release of its jailed leader, Karabakh war veteran Zhirayr Sefilyan and a number of other jailed oppositionists. They subsequently announced that they also wanted Armenia’s president Serzh Sargsyan to step down.