Erebuni Armed Group Leader Says Police Forces Gather Outside Seized Building

Police have begun to mobilize outside the seized police station in Yerevan’s Erebuni district, while doctors have been removed from the area, Varuzhan Avetisyan, one of the leaders of the armed group “Daredevils of Sasun” and a spokesperson for the anti-government movement Founding Parliament, said in a phone conversation with Gala.tv Thursday. 

Avetisyan added that despite the late Wednesday and early Thursday clashes between law enforcement officers and the several hundred civilians gathered near the cordoned off area, the night inside the building was uneventful.

“We do, however, have food issues; for two days now they’ve stopped sending what little food and cigarettes they used to give us. They have also removed the medical staff from the area, which means that they are probably getting ready for a special operation with the use of unlawful means. Police forces have already gathered under [the building’s] fences,” he said.

Recall, 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.