Following a five-hour hearing, a Yerevan judge previously affiliated with a pro-government political party allowed investigators to hold Lieutenant-General Tiran Khachatrian, a former deputy chief of the Armenian army’s General Staff, in pre-trial detention for the next two months.
Armenia’s Investigative Committee publicized few details of the accusations denied by Khachatrian. It said only that Khachatrian showed a “negligent attitude towards the performance of his official duties” when he commanded from October 7-17, 2020 Armenian troops deployed south of Nagorno-Karabakh. It enabled Azerbaijani forces to break through that section of the frontline and make large territorial gains, the law-enforcement agency added in a statement.
The statement sharply contrasted with Pashinian’s decision on October 20, 2020 to bestow the title of National Hero on Khachatrian and another general. Pashinian declared at the time that they have “crowned their name with glory on the battlefield, especially in the last hours.”
Pashinian referred to what he portrayed as a successful Armenian counteroffensive southwest of Karabakh. Azerbaijani forces continued their advance in that area in the following days, however.
Khachatrian’s lawyers denounced both the accusations levelled against their client and his arrest as baseless. They claimed that the criminal case is designed to punish the general for his “political and civic position” and help the Armenian authorities find scapegoats for their disastrous handling of the six-week war.
“It’s perplexing to give Mr. Khachatrian the title of national hero just days after those operations and to indict and arrest Mr. Khachatrian for the same operations four and a half year later,” one of the lawyers, Armen Andrikian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday.
Khachatrian was sacked in February 2021 just hours after laughing off Pashinian’s claim that the Armenian army’s most advanced Russian-made missiles seriously malfunctioned during the war. The sacking prompted an unprecedented statement by the army’s top brass accusing Pashinian of incompetence and misrule and demanding his resignation. The premier condemned the statement as a coup attempt.
Khachatrian has since been a vocal critic of Pashinian, voicing support for repeated opposition attempts to topple him.
Opposition leaders hold Pashinian responsible for Armenia’s defeat in the Karabakh war. Pashinian has put the blame on the country’s former leaders.