The Azerbaijani serviceman who entered a home in Shaki and shot an Armenian mother in front of her children had no intention of killing anyone, the head of Armenia’s Investigative Committee said on Tuesday, reports Zartonk Media.
Investigative Committee Chairman Artur Poghosyan told journalists at the National Assembly on November 3 that Nasimi Musayev has been questioned and has given testimony, and that the committee’s assessment of the facts established so far is that he did not intend to kill.
“He has been questioned and has given testimony. I cannot disclose the content of the questioning. But I can say that he has given testimony and indicated the location, the incident, the terrain and how he arrived — he has described it all,” Poghosyan said.
Asked directly why the soldier opened fire, Poghosyan said, “All I can say is that he had no intent to kill.” He said the assessment rests on the factual circumstances of the incident.
Poghosyan told Azatutyun that the investigation had established the soldier got lost in fog and did not intend to harm the residents of Shaki. He described a man who walked until he found a house, broke the glass, went in because he was hungry, cooked a meal and changed his clothes, then took a phone out of a child’s hand and sat the children down for hours without harming them.
The Investigative Committee’s own record says otherwise. In the same report that carried Poghosyan’s remarks, the committee confirmed that both of the woman’s children sought medical treatment for injuries after the incident. One had a fractured right wrist. The other had soft tissue bruising.
A journalist put it to Poghosyan that he was defending the Azerbaijani soldier the way other Armenian officials had. He disagreed, and listed the charges.
Musayev is accused of causing grievous bodily harm, unlawfully depriving a person of liberty, violating the inviolability of a home, theft, and illegally crossing the border. Poghosyan said the man had stolen bank cards and money from the house. He said the preliminary investigation will be completed shortly, and that a closed session on the incident is scheduled at the National Assembly for November 5.
He also said he did not know which facility Musayev is being held in.
Musayev entered the house in Shaki, a settlement in the Sisian municipality of Syunik Province, on October 1, and opened fire after he was discovered. Ani Avetisyan, an Armenian citizen born in 1987, was wounded. Her children found him in their home first.
Speaking to Azatutyun from a hospital in Yerevan, Avetisyan said she returned home from Sisian to find Musayev pointing a rifle at her children, whom he had held for about 15 minutes. He fired 3 shots. The first missed.
When he aimed at her son, she grabbed the rifle barrel with her hands. She lost her left thumb and her other fingers were severely injured. She fought him with a knife, and when he turned the weapon on her chest she forced the barrel down and was shot in the leg. After she fell he tried to fire again, reloaded, and fled. He was apprehended later that day.
“If I hadn’t reacted at that moment, neither I nor my children would be alive today,” Avetisyan said. She faces 3 more operations.
She said she did not know her attacker was Azerbaijani, because he never spoke, and that police arrived after she did despite an emergency call.
On October 2, the Investigative Committee announced that Musayev had been remanded in custody for 2 months.
Azerbaijan notified Armenia’s National Security Service on September 29 that a serviceman had left his unit and might have crossed into Armenian territory. Residents of Shaki were not warned. According to Baku, Musayev left his unit in Lachin on September 26. Azerbaijan has charged him with desertion.
Poghosyan is not the first senior Armenian official to describe the incident in terms favorable to the man who shot Avetisyan.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told parliament on October 7 that the shooting was an “ordinary criminal incident” and that Avetisyan should have waited for the police. “I understand that maternal instinct is strong, but when you call the police, you must wait for the police to act,” he said. He also raised the possibility that the soldier had gotten lost in foggy weather.
A day earlier, asked on the program CTRL Z whether Musayev could be exchanged for the Armenian hostages unjustly held in Azerbaijan, Pashinyan said the two questions were “different topics” and should not be linked. He said trading him would create a precedent that could be turned against Armenia later.
“Suppose we said, give us some of the captives so that we hand over this soldier,” Pashinyan said. “Tomorrow a soldier may cross over from our side. Who are we going to give him to?”
Avetisyan answered Pashinyan from her hospital bed. “If we had been warned, I wouldn’t have sent my children to school, and we wouldn’t have stayed in Shaki,” she said.
