Baku ‘Not Demanding’ Azeri Soldier’s Extradition By Armenia

The soldier, Nasimi Musayev, was apprehended shortly after shooting and seriously wounding an Armenian woman inside her house in Shaki, a village in the Syunik province. Azerbaijani prosecutors said following the incident that he deserted on September 26 his army unit deployed on the Armenian border. Shaki is located some 20 kilometers from that border section.

Pashinian said that Yerevan has not yet received extradition requests from Baku. He indicated his readiness to eventually free and repatriate Musayev, who is facing multiple criminal charges in Armenia.

“If that soldier goes to Azerbaijan, he won’t be going home; he will be put on trial,” Pashinian told a news briefing.

“The problem is that he opened fire and entered people’s home,” he said. “Had none of that happened, we would have returned the soldier to Azerbaijan that very day.”

Musayev shot the woman, Ani Avetisian, when she tried to pull his assault rifle away from two of children reportedly held by him at the gunpoint. A wounded Avetisian managed to stab him with a kitchen knife before he fled her house.

Pashinian effectively blamed the Shaki woman for the gunfire on Wednesday, saying that she should have waited for police to arrive at the scene instead of taking on the armed soldier.

“I do understand that maternal instinct is strong, but when the police are called, one must wait for the police to take action,” he told the Armenian parliament in remarks that stoked opposition anger with his response to the incident.

“What should have the Armenian mother done to protect her children when the state led by you failed in its primary mission to defend the country and its citizens?” Anna Grigorian, the parliamentary leader of the opposition Hayastan alliance, hit back at Pashinian. “What should a woman, a mother do when her government leaders safely sit at home with their children while she has to defend her children?”

Hayastan and the other parliamentary opposition bloc, Strong Armenia, maintain that the incident was the result of a serious security breach highlighting Pashinian’s continuing failure to secure the country’s border with Azerbaijan and negating his claims about peace established between the two South Caucasus nations. They also say that the Azerbaijani serviceman should be sent home only in exchange for Armenian prisoners held in Azerbaijan.