{"id":279686,"date":"2017-03-22T20:54:10","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T16:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/epress.am\/?p=279686"},"modified":"2017-03-22T20:54:10","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T16:54:10","slug":"former-karabakh-military-commander-arrested","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2017\/03\/22\/former-karabakh-military-commander-arrested.html","title":{"rendered":"Former Karabakh Military Commander Arrested"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Samvel Babayan, former commander of the Nagorno-Karabakh army, and two other persons were arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of trying to smuggle weapons into Armenia, according to a statement by Armenia\u2019s National Security Service.<\/p>\n<p>The arrest came just hours after the NSS reported that border guards had prevented an attempt of smuggling parts for a Russian-made Igla shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile across the Georgia-Armenia border.<\/p>\n<p>The latest statement did not identify the two other suspects; it added, however, that the two had been commissioned to acquire and transfer the Igla parts to Armenia by Babayan.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, in its Wednesday issue, the local Zhamanak newspaper had \u201cpredicted\u201d Babayan\u2019s arrest, writing that Armenia\u2019s security forces were suspecting the former military commander of planning a \u201c<strong><span style=\"color: #003366;\"><a style=\"color: #003366;\" href=\"http:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2016\/07\/31\/yerevan-gunmen-put-down-their-weapons.html\">Sasna Tsrer-2<\/a><\/span><\/strong>\u201d operation.<\/p>\n<p>Samvel Babayan has been a strong supporter of the opposition ORO bloc co-headed by former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan, former foreign minister Vardan Oskanyan, and past presidential candidate Raffi Hovannisyan in the Armenian parliamentary elections scheduled for April 2.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to reporters following Babayan\u2019s arrest, Ohanyan said Babayan \u201cis our ideological brother.\u201d He also suggested that the arrest \u201ccould be related to the operations carried out against ORO\u201d in the pre-election period.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The arrest came just hours after the NSS reported that border guards had prevented an attempt of smuggling parts for a Russian-made Igla shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile across the Georgia&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":279684,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[65984,51049],"tags":[60567,12998],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}