Former Commander of Nagorno Karabakh Army Sentenced to Five Years’ Imprisonment

In mid-January, Harutyunyan was found guilty of having a negligent attitude towards military service during martial law and war, resulting in the death of 20 soldiers of the Tsor military unit during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.

According to Liparit Simonyan, who represented the victims in the case, on October 12, 2020, the division, located in a combat position, spotted a group of soldiers approaching from the opposite direction. As they tried to determine their identity, they reportedly received confirmation that the soldiers were Armenians.

“[Harutyunyan] personally said that they are 100 percent ours. He said it twice. As a result [Azerbaijanis] came and surrounded those children [referring to the soldiers]. The children resisted as much as they could, but due to the inequality of forces, there were 20 casualties,”  Simonyan said.

Harutyunyan’s other lawyer, Arsen Sardaryan, put the responsibility of Harutyunyan’s command on the intelligence report, however.

“Secondly, there is no evidence, apart from the testimony of a single person, that Jalal Harutyunyan said ‘[they are] ours. Jalal Harutyunyan says, ‘I said, they should be ours, they might be ours,’ and there was sufficient data for that,”  Sardaryan told RFE/RL.

RFE/RL also quoted Simonyan, who countered this claim by quoting an unnamed intelligence head.