Former Karabakh Army Chief Jalal Harutyunyan Sentenced to 5.5 Years in Prison

YEREVAN — An Armenian court sentenced a former commander of Nagorno-Karabakh Defense  army Lieutenant-General Jalal Harutyunyan to five and a half years in prison on Friday after holding him responsible for one of the military setbacks suffered during the 2020 war with Azerbaijan.

Harutyunyan was indicted in September 2022 over the capture by Azerbaijani troops of the frontline positions of a Karabakh Armenian artillery unit on October 12, 2020. Armenian law-enforcement authorities say it was the result of inaccurate information provided by him to the unit. The latter lost at least 20 soldiers and 8 howitzers on that day.

The court of first instance of Armenia’s Syunik province gave the prison sentence to Harutyunyan three weeks after convicting him of “careless attitude towards military service.” The 50-year-old general denies the accusation. His lawyers said he will appeal against the verdict.

Armenia’s Investigative Committee also brought in 2022 another accusation against Harutyunyan stemming from an Armenian counteroffensive against advancing Azerbaijani forces launched on October 7, 2020 ten days after the outbreak of large-scale fighting. Its failure facilitated Azerbaijan’s subsequent victory in the six-week war.

Investigators said at the time that Harutyunyan ordered two army units to launch an attack southeast of Karabakh despite lacking intelligence and the fact that they were greatly outnumbered by the enemy and had no air cover. A prosecutor overseeing the inquiry dropped this charge a year later, however.

Harutyunyan was seriously wounded in an Azerbaijani missile strike on October 26, 2020. He was appointed as head of an Armenian military inspectorate after recovering from his wounds.

Harutyunyan’s successor as Karabakh army commander, Mikael Arzumanyan, was arrested in August 2022 on different criminal negligence charges. In particular, the Investigative Committee blamed him for the November 2020 fall of the strategic Karabakh town of Shushi. Arzumanyan, who remains under arrest, strongly denies this accusation. Unlike him, Harutyunyan was not held in detention before or during his trial.