Epress.am News from Armenia
Those inside the seized police station in Yerevan – the members of “Daredevils of Sasun” armed group and the four police officers who are being held hostage – were finally provided with food on Thursday evening, opposition activist David Sanasaryan told the citizens gathered outside the building in Yerevan’s Erebuni district.
According to Sanasaryan, the food had been transferred to the group by Nagorno-Karabakh parliament MP Vitaly Balasanyan who today met with the gunmen to negotiate with them. The activist added that the parliamentarian has promised to from now on personally ensure that the people inside do not run out of food.
Note, despite the violent dispersal by riot police of demonstrators the previous night, several hundred sympathizers of the Erebuni gunmen have again gathered on the blocked street leading to the seized police station.
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.