State Security Service of Azerbaijan brings separatist Harutyunyan to Baku Complete list of accusations against him/VIDEO

You can run, you can hide, but can’t escape my law - we have changed the lyrics in a famous song by Enrique Iglesias to summarize the story of Arayik Harutunyan. Iglesias sings about his unescapable love, but we are not going to sing the same about Harutunyan, whose hands are stained with our compatriots’ blood.  

After a long “catch me if you can” journey between Armenia, Russia, and our Garabagh region, Harutunyan, a former “president” of the separatist “Artsakh republic” was detained in the latter’s territory on October 3, reports Caliber.Az.

Harutunyan was deprived of a chance to complete his final escape from the Azerbaijani law last month after the successful anti-terror measures by the Azerbaijan Armed Forces to surrender the separatists in Garabagh.

The one-day counter-terrorist campaign disabled the entire military infrastructure of the separatist entity, calling itself the “republic of Artsakh”. They withdrew agreeing to a complete disarmament. Currently, their materiel is being confiscated by the Azerbaijani army, in coordination with the Russian peacekeepers temporarily deployed in Garabagh.

The arrest of Harutunyan was the pinnacle of a criminal case launched by the Prosecutor General’s Office of Azerbaijan in February 2022. The motives for the case were his ordering a missile attack on Azerbaijan’s second-largest Gandja city. On October 1, he was put on the international wanted list by the Azerbaijani authorities.

On October 4, 2020, Harutunyan ordered the firing of rockets on Gandja, located 100 kilometres from the combat zone. The assault killed one civilian and wounded 30 others.

Yerevan-backed separatists led by Harutunyan said the offensive targeted military buildings and the airport in Gandja. However, the Azerbaijani side submitted facts that the city had no military facilities.

Following the attack, Harutunyan warned of more missile strikes should Baku not stop the counter-attack operation.

Throughout the 2020 war, Gandja was repeatedly subjected to rocket attacks. Following the first attack on October 4, the Armenian military targeted the city on October 5, 8, 10, and 17. The civilian death toll in the wake of the assaults stood at 32, and at least 125 others were wounded.

Harutunyan is currently in a temporary holding cell. He was put on a pre-trial detention to further investigate his crimes.

The State Security Service of Azerbaijan announced that Harutunyan is accused of:

• participating in an aggressive war in the territory of Azerbaijan under the so-called "President of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic" and other titles;
• recruiting, training, and financing mercenaries, as well as organizing their deployment in armed conflict and military operations;
• violating the international humanitarian law norms and issuing criminal orders during the armed conflict;
• forming illegal armed units not provided for by the legislation of Azerbaijan and organizing their activities;
• equipping those units with weapons, ammunition, explosives, military equipment, and military supplies smuggled into the territory of Azerbaijan, as well as organizing training on their use;
• financing of terrorism;
• continuously mining the territories of Azerbaijan, killing numerous civilians and inflicting various degrees of physical injuries on them by firing ballistic and other types of rockets targeting residential areas and civilian objects of the densely populated Gandja city and Barda region of Azerbaijan located outside the combat zone;
• organizing terrorist attacks resulting in serious damage to infrastructure and committing numerous other crimes

Harutunyan is charged with articles 100, 116, 117, 120, 214, 214-1, 214-3, 218, 279 and other articles of the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan.