Former Commander of Nagorno Karabakh Army sentenced to five years and six months imprisonment

The Former Commander of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army Jalal Harutyunyan has been sentenced to five years and six months imprisonment after previously being found guilty of negligence. His lawyers have vowed to appeal the verdict.

According to his lawyers, Harutyunyan maintained his innocence before the sentencing on Friday.

‘We will also challenge the severity of the sentence’, Andranik Mnatsakanyan, Harutyunyan’s lawyer, told CivilNet.

Mnatsakanyan also said that Harutyunyan has ‘a debilitating illness’ and should undergo a medical examination, which the court ‘unjustifiably denied’ although Harutyunyan had undergone surgery at least seven times in the past.

Harutyunyan was injured during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War when a military vehicle he was travelling in was blown up.

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.

Former Commander of the Nagorno-Karabakh Army found guilty of deadly negligence

He faces up to 10 years imprisonment for his negligent attitude which led to the deaths of 20 soldiers in 2020.

OC MediaArshaluys Barseghyan

According to Liparit Simonyan, who represented the victims in the case, on 12 October 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% 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.

‘He [the unnamed intelligence head] even said that “it was very surprising to me, because I, being the person responsible for the intelligence, could not decide at that time whether they were ours or not, and he declares that ‘they are ours’”’, Simonyan said.

Two charges were brought against Harutyunyan in September 2022, after which he was suspended from his post as Head of the Military Oversight Service of the Armenian Ministry of Defence and was banned from leaving the country.

Harutyunyan had been appointed to the position in Armenia’s Defence Ministry in February 2021.

In November 2023, Harutyunyan was acquitted of the charges related to a counterattack on 7 October 2020. According to the charges, Harutyunyan allegedly showed a negligent attitude causing serious consequences — the counterattack failed, and Armenian units suffered large losses of military equipment and manpower.

The head of the Tsor unit’s artillery division, Gevorg Gevorgyan, is also facing charges of inaction by the authorities during martial law. He is accused of acting out of personal interest in order to save his own life, which caused serious material consequences.

Former Deputy Chief of Armenia’s General Staff arrested for war-related ‘negligence’

Tiran Khachatryan has been accused of negligence towards his official duties during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.

OC MediaArshaluys Barseghyan