Armenian Armed Group Insist They Had Nothing to Do with Killing of Policeman

Varuzhan Avetisyan, one of the leaders of “Daredevils of Sasun” armed group who’ve been occupying a Yerevan police station for more than a week, announced Sunday morning in conversation with 1in.am that the gunmen had nothing to do with yesterday’s killing of a police officer.

Police spokesperson Ashot Aharonyan wrote on Facebook Saturday evening that 30-year-old officer of police forces Yuri Tepanosyan was shot by a sniper while sitting in a car parked some 400 meters from the seized building. Aharonyan claimed that the fire had come from the occupied territory; Avetisyan, meanwhile, insisted today that this spot is out of the group’s sight and therefore the officer “must have been killed by a police sniper.”

“I’m not saying it was intentional, but I can assure that we [did not kill Tepanosyan,” the group leader said.

Avetisyan added that all four members of the ambulance crew, who on Wednesday entered the station to treat wounded gunmen and were not allowed to leave, have already been let go. "They were not hostages; there was no control over them and they had been told they were free to leave whenever they wanted. And [the two remaining medics] did so yesterday," the gunman said.