Epress.am News from Armenia
Smbat Barseghyan, a member of the “Daredevils of Sasun” armed group that kept a Yerevan police station under siege for two weeks in July, has been on a hunger strike continuously for 5 days to demand that the injured members of the armed group be provided with proper medical care and be transferred to civilian hospitals, Hayk Alumyan, a lawyer for Barseghyan, told Epress.am Tuesday.
Alumyan added that he intended to visit his client today to make sure Barseghyan did not have any health issues.
Lawyers for the arrested gunmen have repeatedly voiced concerns over inadequate medical treatment provided to their clients. Some have gone so far as to say that the “Daredevils of Sasun” members were being tortured.
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.
The standoff ended on July 31, as the group announced that they were laying down their arms and would instead continue their fight as “prisoners of war.”