3 minute read
Azerbaijan has not filed an extradition request for its serviceman who was apprehended in Armenia after crossing into the country and wounding a village resident last week, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said.
“There is no extradition request from Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has also opened a criminal case and issued a statement. Azerbaijan may want to conduct an investigation as part of its own criminal case as well. If that serviceman goes to Azerbaijan, he will not be going home; he will be tried in Azerbaijan if he ends up there,” Pashinyan said.
The Prime Minister again noted that the Azerbaijani serviceman committed a crime on the territory of Armenia.
“He committed several crimes, but the culmination was shooting at our citizen. I am not saying, ‘let a verdict be handed down, let it go through three instances, and then I’ll look at the verdict and see whether he committed a crime or not.’ I am saying that he committed a crime,” Pashinyan said at a press briefing.
Armenia’s National Security Service said last Thursday that it had been notified by Azerbaijani authorities on September 29 that an Azerbaijani serviceman had allegedly gone absent without leave and was missing. The Azerbaijani side did not rule out that he could have crossed into Armenia. Armenia and Azerbaijan conducted a search operation. Later, on October 1, Armenian emergency services received a report that a 39-year-old Armenian woman had been shot in the leg at her home in the Shaki settlement in Syunik Province. Authorities determined that the Azerbaijani serviceman was the shooter, and he was apprehended shortly afterward in Shaki and detained.
Meanwhile, health authorities said earlier last week that the woman was in stable, non-life-threatening condition and was receiving the required treatment. She was transferred to Yerevan after being initially hospitalized in Sisian. The Sisian Medical Center reported that the injured Armenian citizen’s children, who were with their mother during the incident, aged 15 and 12, had sought medical assistance for injuries. The 12-year-old child had a soft-tissue contusion, while the 15-year-old child had a fracture of the right wrist. Health authorities said that the children are in satisfactory condition.
The Azerbaijani serviceman, currently in pre-trial detention, faces charges of illegally crossing Armenia’s state border, smuggling military-use products, firearms and ammunition, illegally trafficking in firearms and ammunition, unlawful entry into another person’s residence, and causing grievous bodily harm under aggravating circumstances, including with a firearm.