YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — A deputy head of the National Security Service (NSS) overseeing Armenian border guards was sacked on October 5 following the capture of an Azerbaijani soldier who crossed into Armenia and attacked members of a local family.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s office gave no reason for his decision to fire NSS Major-General Davit Sanamyan. The latter’s primary area of responsibility was the coordination and oversight of the country’s border guard troops subordinate to the NSS.
The border guards are deployed along some sections of Armenia’s long border with Azerbaijan. One of those sections is not far from Shaki, a village in the southeastern Syunik province where the Azerbaijani serviceman, Nasimi Musayev, was captured after seriously wounding a local resident.
Armenian opposition leaders have decried the NSS’s and other security agencies’ failure to issue security alerts to residents of local Armenian communities. They have portrayed the incident as a serious security breach highlighting what they call Pashinyan’s continuing failure to secure the border with Azerbaijan.
Andranik Kocharyan, a senior lawmaker representing the ruling Civil Contract party, on October 5 also expressed concern at the incident while avoiding far-reaching conclusions.
“We have encountered a situation that must be prevented in the future,” he told journalists. “For two days, [the Azerbaijani soldier] was not merely within our territory but inside the home of one of our citizens.”
