Gunmen in Armenia release last hostages

Armed men holding nine policemen hostage in Armenia’s capital Yerevan for almost a week released all four remaining captives on Saturday, a mediator between the gunmen and the security service said.

The armed men allowed journalists into the captured police compound and spoke of their readiness to fight if security forces tried to storm the facility.

“We’re not afraid. We’re thinking how to organise our safety. We are always in a combat ready mood,” said a representative of the armed men, Varuzhan Avetisyan.

The gunmen seized the police station last Sunday (July 17) in a bid to have a jailed opposition leader released, killing a police officer and wounding two others. They released two of the hostages on the same day and three more on Monday (July 18).

The gunmen freed their remaining four hostages on Saturday (July 23), including Yerevan’s deputy police chief and a national deputy police chief, after the authorities agreed to allow the media in to the police station grounds.

The number of the armed people remaining at the police station is unclear.

The hostage-takers’ main demand was the release of Jirair Sefilian, an opposition leader accused by the authorities in the ex-Soviet state of plotting civil unrest. Sefilian was jailed in June over allegations of illegally possessing weapons.

Sefilian, a former military commander, has accused Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan of mishandling a long-running conflict between Armenian-backed separatists in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan and Azeri forces.

A Moscow-brokered ceasefire halted four days of violence in the South Caucasus region in April, the worst flare-up in years, but sporadic shooting persists at night and some deaths have been reported.

Nagorno-Karabakh’s defence ministry said on Saturday that one of their soldiers was wounded as a result of shooting last night. Azeri officials were not available for comments.