Epress.am News from Armenia
Early on Thursday, at around 4am, police cleared the Khorenatsi street leading to the seized police station in Yerevan’s Erebuni district after the several dozen protesters gathered there refused to heed a police order to disperse.
Most of the protesters appeared to be forcibly detained on the spot, while getting punched and kicked by police officers in the process. Several of those detained told Epress.am over the phone later that as of 7:30 am people were slowly being released from custody.
Street cleaning activities began immediately after the dispersal; law enforcement officers were seen sleeping on the ground shortly after.
Note, late on Wednesday some 200 supporters of the Erebuni gunmen clashed with riot police after the latter refused to allow them to pass food to those inside. The crowd attempted to break through the police wall and started to throw stones and other items towards the officers to which law enforcement representatives responded by using special measures, including truncheons, stun grenades and tear gas. Several dozen police officers and civilians were injured as a result, a number of protesters have been detained.
The siege of the Erebuni police station began early on Sunday after 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.
Sefilyan was arrested last month for having allegedly formed an armed group and plotting to organize an armed takeover of the capital's important communication buildings. For that purpose, Armenia's law enforcement authorities insist, the oppositionist had organized an illegal acquisition and transport of weapons and ammunition and their storage in various locations in Yerevan; he now faces charges under the corresponding article of the Armenian criminal code. Sefilyan and his supporters, however, claim that he is being persecuted for his political views, namely, for opposing territorial concessions to Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.